Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition (21 page)

I'm immobilised further with a ton of books and settle at a table. The
library is a small basement room; outside the window you can see just a
square of sunny pavement. Perfect for long hours of research, reading
and sketching. My own pains are quickly forgotten as I encounter every
variation of human malformation, many beyond belief. Often the photos
are of babies, who look at you with wide serious eyes; the older children
look rather dazed, propped up naked in front of the camera, like Auschwitz
experiments.

Many useful photos of kyphotic spines.

It might be possible to create the optical illusion of muscle wastage by
enlarging the bone joints. This is distinctive in many cases.

The librarian brings me some medical essays on what might have
been wrong with Richard, as he appears in Shakespeare's play. How
extraordinary that her filing system should extend to this.

Working from clues in the Richard and Henry VI texts, the theories are
varied and some rather fanciful. One suggests his kyphosis was caused by
the breech delivery ('I came into the world with my legs forward'), another
that breech deliveries can cause cerebral palsy. The oddest suggests he
was suffering from a rather unpleasant bowel problem called coeliac
disease, which explains why he's so often referred to as `foul' and `indigested'.

Play him smelly?

The weather plays April Fool all day - bright sunshine, then snow, hail,
sun again.

Dinner with Dickie. The Play For Today he directed, UndertheHammer,
has been on this week and has been a big success. I think it's his best
work yet.

Still battling out Richard ideas with him. He questions me carefully. `If
he has crutches, why does no one mention them in the text?'

`They do. They keep referring to him as various four-legged creatures.'

`Hmmm.' He talks again about how my work is straying away from the
kind of acting that he respects (stillness, truth, openness) towards tricksy swagger. He urges me to see Richard as crippled inside, to minimalise
the deformity. `You don't have to think of yourself as just a physical actor,
you know. You do have other qualities.'

`But in the text, in Richard's first speech, he says that he is "Deformed,
unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made
up." He's not talking about flat feet, he's talking about something massive.
Why should it be such a hang-up otherwise?'

`Because our faults always seem exaggerated to ourselves.'

`Then why do others see it? Why does Lady Anne call him a "lump of
foul deformity"?'

`Because she's not that keen on him.'

`So everyone just invents these descriptions, but actually he looks like
Robert Redford?'

`Look, all I'm trying to say is don't let it take over. If you're going to
use those bloody crutches they must become part of Richard's body in a
way, so that the audience can just forget about them after the first five
minutes.'

This raises a new problem. How am I going to rehearse? How am I
going to hold the script and practise on the crutches at the same time?
The only solution would seem to be learning the lines before rehearsals
start. This goes against everything Dickie believes in as a director: `That's
terribly unfair to your fellow actors. Come sailing in with your lines
learned. The cast are already going to be in awe of you as the leading
actor. That way you're really going to distance yourself from them and
give them no chance of catching up. Anyway, how can you possibly
learn the lines before you know the first thing about your character, his
relationship to the other characters, the situations of each scene? It's
unthinkable!'

Good to be put through this, although somewhat alarming.

MANOR HOUSE HOSPITAL, HAMPSTEAD In pursuit of her polio
theory, Charlotte has arranged for me to meet Tom Wadsworth, an
orthopaedic surgeon. I am met by a bustling, cheerful nurse with a thick
German accent. She seems very excited by my visit. `So you are an actor.
Which king is it you are to play?'

`Richard the Third.'

`Ach no! You are too young and healthy. Go away, you must not do it!'

Luckily Wadsworth comes in before I can be thrown out. He is a short, round, middle aged Yorkshireman with small eyes hidden behind half
glasses. At first his manner seems wearily professional but it soon becomes
apparent that the man is a raging and delightful eccentric. When he talks
you miss every other phrase, the Northern sounds buzzing quickly and
elusively round the sunny room.

`So you're to play a scoliotic ... this book ... illustrated by ... best
medical illustrator in ... borrow it if ... back to me sometime.'

This throws me somewhat, since I have definitely decided against the
S-shaped scoliotic back with side hump. I say, `Actually, I'm thinking
more along the lines of kyphosis.' I'm hoping he'll be impressed by my
knowledge of the jargon, but he doesn't seem to have heard at all.

`Scoliosis ... now what happens is, y'see ... twists round ... respiratory difficulties, of course ... this comes up ... this over here ... there
you have it.' He sits back, puffing from his impersonation of a scoliotic.

I am phased, but determined. `I see. What would happen if it were
kyphosis?'

At this point the door opens and the German nurse bustles in with his
morning mail. She says something about a complaint which jolts him into
life.

He says, `Can you fetch Mister uhh ... some tea?'

`Perhaps he would prefer coffee.'

`I would, yes please.'

`It's only Manor House coffee, I'm afraid,' she chuckles, `not Maxwell
House.'

`Poison,' mutters Wadsworth tearing at his letters, `Complaints! ...
What's she talking about? ... strange sense of humour, stranger than
mine ... mustn't be churlish ... Out-patients! Disgraceful! Naked people
lying in corridors ... right, that's that.' He tosses the papers aside. `Where
were we? Respiratory problems ... scoliosis.'

Clearly I'm not going to get him on to the subject of kyphosis, so I try
a different tack. `Actually, it's terribly useful what you told me, but I was
hoping to ask you about polio.'

`Poliomyelitis?' he asks, and continues to correct me each time I use
the abbreviation, to check we're talking about the same thing. I have
difficulty pronouncing new words and eventually make a brave stab at
it, but it comes out as `poliomuhhhs'. But this won't wash with him.
`Poliomyelitis?' he asks. Firmly, as if to break down a stubborn intern.

What he tells me about poliomyelitis is both encouraging and unhelpful.
It is a virus leading to muscular paralysis which can affect any of the limbs to various degrees. It is therefore difficult for him to generalise about the
symptoms and most of my questions are met with the answer, `Depends
on the extent of the paralysis.' But he does confirm the floppy, outwardturning feet that Charlotte demonstrated, and talks about a shapelessness
of the limbs, a lack of curvature in the muscles.

The inconsistency of the disease allows me a wide range of possibilities.

Wadsworth says, `Yes, give him a scoliotic back ... some poliomyelitis
in a leg ... bit in the arm ... should do the trick.'

'Uhm, probably be kyphosis, but anyway, good, yes, thank you. Are there
any other side-effects to the disease?'

`Respiratory difficulties,' he replies briskly.

'No, I mean to polio.'

`Poliomyelitis?'

`Yes.'

`Can't think of any.'

`Eating problems?'

'Nope.'

`Sleeping?'

`Nope.'

`Sexually?'

`Nope. Doesn't affect the groin area or the libido. Though ... depending on the extent of the paralysis ... your chap might have difficulty with
positions.'

'Positions?'

`Positions.'

And on this thought-provoking note he wraps up the interview.

The cheerful German nurse ushers me out. `And where is it you are
to play this terrible king?'

'Stratford-on-Avon.'

Her eyes go misty. `Ahh. One of the first places I visited when I came
to this country long time ago. And a more beautiful place on God's earth
you could not ask for.' Then, looking at me, she shakes her head and
says, `Too young, too healthy, don't do it.'

sTRATFoRD Hump-fitting with the Bills A. and D.

The Technical of Merchant is in progress on stage. We stand watching
the television monitor in the Green Room. I still find it annoying that the
Gobbos are hunchbacks.

`We can hardly be accused of plagiarism,' says Bill A., `giving Richard
the Third a hump!'

We go over the road to the wardrobe building and find that Frances
Roe, head of wardrobe, has laid out a grisly exhibition in the fitting-room.
`This is Ian Holm's foot, this Ian Richardson's and here's Alan Howard's.'
They are boots built up to look like club feet. Howard's is the most
spectacular with studs and the chain used to drag the foot along. `Now
over here,' she says, leading us across the room as if in a department
store, `I dug out some of the humps we've used. Just to give you an idea
of what you might want. This is Alan Howard's again, and here is Anton
Lesser's.' These are vests with the humps built into them. `They're both
side humps but we've also done two lovely big central humps for the
Gobbos this season.'

Frances hands me one of the hump-vests to try. I shrink away. The
idea of building my deformity on top of another actor's seems wrong.
Worse than that, it seems somehow unclean. Not the garment itself which
is spotless (scene in Stratford's Sketchleys: `Just two jerkins, one doublet
and the hump then?'), but the notion.

`Isn't there some other way of doing this?' I ask.

Bill D. to the rescue. He finds a body stocking and says, `Climb into
that and we'll shove in bits of padding.'

It's a form of body sculpture. For a couple of hours I stand there while
they force armfuls of padding into the stocking. An enormous wide back,
huge shoulders bulging up into the hump which rises to join almost at the
top of the head. Bill D. says he's been looking at a book on the making
of the film Alien and has been inspired by the shape of the creature. `Like
there's no neck, just this massive energy coming up the back and going
straight into the cranium.'

By padding the hips, knees and ankle joints we twist the body. This is
a crucial experiment. My theory is that it must be possible to build the
deformity and not have to hold it. It's clearly going to work. The optical
illusion is that both legs are permanently twisted in one direction.

The image is complete and we look at it on the crutches. The massive
top-heavy bulk and especially the thickened arms make the legs look very
thin. And the enlarged joints make the muscles look wasted. The whole
thing makes perfect sense - a man who has had to work hard at building
up the strength in his upper body because of a weakness in the legs. Like
those disabled athletes in wheelchairs. The bulk looks so heavy it seems to
throw the body forward, and appears unsupportable without the crutches.

`Now, what colour is he in?' Bill D. asks. `It's gotta be black, hasn't it?
Gotta be black. Dusty black to start with, inky black later on.'

`Is this a good moment to discuss the head?' asks Bill A. slightly
cautiously. This is already a bone of contention. I offer a deal: I'll drop
all ideas of facial prosthesis except for a broken nose and cauliflower ears,
in exchange for not having to wear a wig. They seem pleasantly surprised.
Bill D. counter-offers: no wig, but a hair-piece at the back to fill in the
gap where the hump meets my head. `That way we see your own forehead
going into your own hairline going into the hump. The join is thus totally
invisible.'

Now he takes polaroids to work from, pretending to be David Bailey at
Richard III's wedding: `Look this way Your Highness, smile if you can;
Lady Anne in a bit, down a bit, that's it luv, try and stoop down to your
husband's level ...'

We yell with laughter, a lot of it relief. Bill D.'s invention is endless:
`The Mighty Hunchback. Sounds like a new hamburger chain. Or the
new VW.'

I drive back to London feeling very high. But later I have another look at
the polaroid I bought back. The misshapen white body stocking and
NHS crutches make me look like I've just returned from a disastrous
ski-ing holiday. It's difficult to tell whether this is a good idea, or one as
daft as this photograph looks.

Bullied by Charlotte back to classes at the Body Control Studio - so
much part of my recuperation after the accident. Alan Herdman's Pilates
Exercises are based on the principle of all support coming from the
stomach. You stretch and strain on various racks while Alan stands above
you and prods steely fingers into your middle, saying `Stom-ache!' -
instantly giving you just that. My favourite bit is at the end, when you put
on moonboots and hang upside down for ten minutes. The spine relaxes,
all the organs re-arrange themselves and you come away feeling beautifully
stretched.

Video of last night's QED programme on a travelling medical team in
India's remote northern villages. A lot of footage of polio victims. Some
cases are so extreme that they're reduced to moving around in various
squatting positions, little wooden platforms in each hand. Would it be
possible to play Richard scrunched up like this, as an alternative to the
crutches? I try it. It's agony.

Maybe Bill A. is right about extreme agility. Maybe it would be possible
to develop such speed and flexibility with the crutches that they become
a positive asset. It's a red herring to think of disability in terms of speed.
It's more to do with a different rhythm. That's what you see when you
look at someone who is disabled: they have a different rhythm.

My last cigarette. Ever. I hope.