Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition Read Online Free

between some immortal couplet. In his tent at Bosworth he used
to bring the house down by referring a line about `soldiers' to the strips
of toast on his breakfast tray. Hastings' head was passed like a rugby ball,
each of us screaming as it landed and passing it on. In the hands of
brilliant, dangerous actors like Jonathan and Bernard Hill (who played a
succession of murderers and mayors) the clowning was inspired, departing
from the rehearsed scenes and taking cast and audience on a magical
mystery tour which, more often than not, proved to be the highlight of
that night's show. I had no such courage and remember feeling woefully
inadequate. I settled instead for a careful, detailed caricature - Buckingham as a smooth-talking, suave aristocrat with a copy of The Times, a
monocle and solidly sleeked-back hair which I relied on for my biggest
laugh: `My hair doth stand on end to hear her curses.'

Sunday 13 November
    Dickie [Richard Wilson, actor and director] phones from Bangalore where
he's filming Passage to India. So at last I can shout it halfway across the
world -'They've asked me to play Richard the Third!'
    `Good,' comes the polite reply, brimming with sub-text. Of all my
friends Dickie has been the least reticent in suggesting that my work has
deteriorated with the R S C - particularly in Tartuffe - and the most
genuinely concerned that it shouldn't be allowed to continue.
    Next, Mum phones from South Africa. But her response is muted as
well. After all, she's known since August.
Monday 14 November
    M O L I E R E An alternative future presents itself. In the audience tonight
sit two film producers, one American, one British. They're going to make
a film about Albert Schweitzer and are looking for someone to play the
part. Tonight's performance was sold out, but I managed to have them
squeezed in by selling part of my soul. Could this be my Gandhi? My
Lawrence ofArabia? Sure it'll be tough spending two years filming in the
leper colonies of Central Africa, but then there are the premieres, the
Royal Command Performances, the Oscar ceremonies ...
    I hurry to the stage door afterwards, a hue of mascara and stage blood
still glistening around my hopeful eyes. The American producer looks
exactly like an American producer, rather like Orson Welles. He steps
forward to greet me:

    'Bravura performance, Mr Shw ... Sht ...'
    `Sher.'
    `Yup. But let me give it to you straight. You are not our Schweitzer.
The one thing that Schweitzer was, was tall!'
Tuesday IS November
    M O N TY SESSION He sits looking at me, all folded round himself, long
limbs so relaxed they seem to bend anywhere like elastic, a little cushion
sometimes held within the spiral. A red sweater is sometimes draped
round the shoulders. The face is long; it has great wisdom; the eyes are
tired, doctor's eyes - they've seen a lot of what there is to see. I le works
as a G P (at the age of sixty-one cycling daily from his Highgate home to
the Lewisham practice), an acupuncturist and psychotherapist, is on the
council of European Nuclear Disarmament, writes the occasional book,
goes mountain climbing in the Himalayas in his spare time.
    His phrases: `Let me posit ...', `Let me share with you ...'; `I hear
you', to reassure; his favourite form of refutation - `Bullshit!' His toughest
rule: you are never allowed to answer, 'I don't know.' And you don't half
make some progress when you can't hide behind that one. At our first
meeting back in March he said, `You'll go through various attitudes
towards me. You'll mistrust me, then you'll love me like a father, then I'll
be a guru, then you'll hate me, and then with any luck you'll see me as
just another person.' I don't think I ever got past the guru stage.
    And he's South African. Or was. Originally from good Communist
Jewish stock, he was imprisoned after Sharpeville for distributing leaflets
(in prison he claims to have given a notable Lady Bracknell), exiled and
can never