Table Of ContentYEAR OF THE KING
For my parents and Jim
Antony Sher
YEAR OF THE KING
An Actor's Diary
and Sketchbook
Contents
Introduction April 2004 page 7
i Barbican August-December 198; page 13
2 South Africa December 1983 page 53
3 Acton Hilton, Canary Wharf and Gravshott Hall January-April 1984 page 81
4 Stratford-upon-Avon .April--August 1984 page 155
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.
Richard III, v. iii
Introduction
Friday 9.9pril2004
Last Saturday night saw the final performance of Othello at the RSC's Swan
Theatre in Stratford, prior to its Japanese tour and London run. To mark the
occasion, my dresser Keith Lovell gave me a farewell gift: a small framed
photograph. I stared at it in astonishment. It showed me twenty years earlier,
backstage at the main house, in the middle of a performance of Richard III. It
must've been taken just before or after the Coronation sequence which we
invented for our production, since I am wearing the vast red silk robe with the
special clasp that allowed us to reveal Richard's naked deformed back during
the annointing ritual. Mal Storry, who played Buckingham, is posing for the
camera behind me, and to one side is my then dresser, the foul-mouthed, good-
hearted Black Mac. Both Mal and Mac look rather deadpan, while I have a
strange sideways smile on my face.
What strikes me first is not how young I look - though this is fairly
alarming - but how relaxed. For the journey towards Richard III, told in the
pages of this book, was a difficult one, full of anxiety, self-doubt and
struggle. Back in 1984 it felt like my whole life depended on the attempt to
conquer this one great role. Yet the photo shows someone just larking about
in the wings. It looks like just another show, just another part.
And here I am now, in 2004, still working for the RSC - my love for the
company undimmed - and indeed playing another of Shakespeare's villains,
lago, a man so thoroughly disturbed and disturbing that he makes Richard III
look like the good guy. So what's changed? Everything. Twenty years might
seem like a long time, but it doesn't feel long enough for some of the
differences between the world I was describing in Year of ' the King and the
world now.
Most extraordinary is what's happened to my birthplace, South Africa. At
the time of writing the book, the system of apartheid seemed immovable, and
its brutalities knew no bounds. And yet now, in this very month of this very
year, South Africa is celebrating the tenth anniversary of its first democratic
elections. Democratic elections? In South Africa? Ask the thirty-five-year-old
in the photograph and he'd have told you it was impossible, at least not
without the streets running with blood. Yet that didn't happen either. Instead a
miracle did. A miracle that began with one remarkable man walking out of
prison to freedom.
On a personal front, much has happened too: as a gay man I've come out
publicly (in this book I'm afraid I'm still very coy about my relationship with
my then partner, Jim Hooper), and my father has died, my funny, difficult
Dad, and I've been knighted, and I was in a clinic for cocaine dependency,
and ... well, if the reader is interested, they could look at Beside Myself, my
autobiography. Year of the King was my first book, but I've since published
seven more, as well as a stage play, I.D. Writing is now a serious rival to
acting in my professional affections, and I'd be hard pressed to say which
occupies the place of first love.
Re-reading Year of the King I was surprised by my obsession with Olivier's
Richard III. At the time I genuinely thought there was such a thing as a
definitive performance of a Shakespeare role or play. Yet since playing the
role myself, I've seen two other Richard Ills that are certainly as good as
anyone might hope for: Ian McKellen's chillingly sour Blackshirt at the
National, and Simon Russell Beale's glorious poisoned toad at the RSC. I now
believe that a significant part of Shakespeare's genius, and one of the reasons
why his work has lasted four hundred years, is that he constantly yields
himself to re-interpretation. God knows what he himself would make of our
endless and busy explorations of how to stage his plays. An all-female Shrew
or an all-Yorkshire Antony and Cleopatra, a circus Dream, the roles of Henry
V and Henry VI played by black actors, a Hamlet who vomits up his father's
Ghost, or indeed a Richard III on crutches ... would he be dismayed by these
portrayals? I hope not.
For me another big difference between 1984 and 2004, and one which is
vital to record here, lies in my approach to speaking Shakespeare's language.
There's a very significant diary entry on page 228 of Year of the King, dated
Sunday 10 June, the weekend before we opened the show: `Time to stop and
think, which I don't really want to do. Refuge in the Gielgud hook, The .-lges
