Stratford.
First day of Henry IV re-rehearsals. In the magnificent Ashcroft Room above the Swan Theatre. After nine months away, it felt strange, yet exciting. For both sides, I think – the newcomers (quite a lot of them) and us veterans. Them trying to catch up with our fully formed performances, and us trying to remember those performances…!
Wednesday 7 October
When we got back here on Sunday, having flown in from South Africa, the first thing I did was hurry into my studio, and turn the Willy Loman painting away from the wall. To my relief, I liked it. (I can only really tell when I haven’t seen it for a while.)
This evening at about six o’clock, with Greg still at work, I was sitting in the studio, staring at the painting, working out what still needed to be done (the perspective of the corridor isn’t right yet), when I glanced over my shoulder and saw three deer right at our fence: two smaller, browner animals with their mother.
So Greg was right.
On Sunday, the adults were in the field at the same time as the fox again, but they didn’t flee from him this time – they saw him off. ‘They’ve got young nearby,’ Greg said.
And here they were now. All very skittish. Even the turn of my head had stopped them grazing. I wanted to switch off my desk light, but couldn’t risk the movement. Wanted also to fetch the camera, and catch the image for Greg (these things are most enjoyable when shared), but again didn’t dare. So I just sat on my own, marvelling.
Saturday 10 October
Cheltenham Book Festival. To promote Year of the Fat Knight: The Falstaff Diaries. I was being interviewed by Libby Purves. While we were waiting to go on, she asked me what I was doing next. Hearing it was Lear, she said she’d recently seen the one at the National, with Sam Mendes directing Simon Russell Beale:
‘They had a great solution to the disappearance of the Fool. Lear killed him in one of the mad scenes.’
I said, ‘But, Libby, we did that in 1982, in Adrian Noble’s production, with Mike Gambon as Lear and me as the Fool.’
‘Oh,’ she said: ‘I never saw that…’
I think I’d embarrassed her, which I hadn’t meant to do. Anyway, plagiarism is an acceptable part of the game. We’re already planning to borrow the idea for Lear’s entrance from Trevor Nunn’s 1968 production, and heaven knows what else we’ll filch from here and there.
Thursday 15 October
The Booker Prize has been won by a gay Jamaican. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. My God, that’s going to be helpful for gay rights in that dreadfully homophobic part of the world. How is Jamaica going to celebrate their son’s success without embracing his sexuality? Their dilemma makes me dance with joy.
Tuesday 20 October
Good Lear development. Discussing casting the other day, Greg said, ‘What about David Troughton as Gloucester?’ I said, ‘Yes please – will he do it?’ Well, Greg offered it, and David came round to the house this morning (he lives close to Stratford). He and Greg disappeared into the living room, and when they came out again, David was on board! This is splendid news. It means that both of Lear’s closest courtiers are being played by RSC heavyweights (Antony Byrne has accepted Kent), and lends itself again to the idea of the world of the play being pre-Christian, rough and tough.
Also, David and I go back a long way. In my first RSC season, in 1982, we did Bulgakov’s Molière together at the old tin-hut TOP. I was Molière and David was Bouton, Molière’s dresser.
It was good to see him today, to enjoy his warmth again. He said:
‘There are three “p”s in an actor’s life. When you start out, it’s the part. Then, if you’re raising a family, it’s the pay. And finally it just becomes the parking. Give me a place to park my car, and I’ll do the job!’
Wednesday 21 October
Design meeting with Niki Turner. She came to the house and spread out her material on the long window seat in the living room. Some were images of art installations or paintings that are inspiring her, and some were rough sketches of her own. I was particularly struck by three charcoal drawings she’d done in black: one with a tall white entrance (the opening court scene), one with a low white entrance (Goneril’s home and Gloucester’s home), and then one with a vast white space with only a strip of black left at the top (basically, the Dover scenes). What about the storm? Which needs an epic image, to match Lear’s first entrance. Greg feels that Lear and the Fool should be raised above the stage, in mid-air. I mentioned that once again Adrian Noble got in first: it’s what we did in our ’82 production: Gambon and I were lifted on a precarious little platform which we called the bird table. Greg replied like Libby Purves did the other day: he hadn’t seen that production. So it’s not strictly plagiarism, and even if it is… blah, blah. Later, I made a passionate little plea about the appearance of the Fool:
‘He needs to be in costume and make-up. He came on to do his act at Goneril’s place, but then they suddenly left there, and he never got back to his dressing room. Then they went to Gloucester’s place, and suddenly they left there too, and now they’re out in the storm, and he’s still dressed like a clown. A clown in the middle of a nightmare. Visually, Shakespeare is giving us a gift here. But a lot of recent productions get distracted by the fact that the Fool is described as “pining” and “bitter”, so they just have this ordinary-looking little man grumbling in a corner. No, no, no! He may be pining and bitter, but he’s still on duty, he’s still doing his job. People become obsessed by the fact that his lines aren’t funny. It doesn’t matter. It does in the Comedies – Touchstone, Feste – their jokes can be difficult. But here’s a man in a Tragedy, trying to be funny. That’s wonderful in itself. It’s Archie Rice, it’s Lenny Bruce towards the end of his…’
I realised that Niki and Greg were staring at me, bemused.
‘Sorry,’ I said; ‘this isn’t for now. I’ll shut up.’
Today’s meeting marked the next phase in my own, long rehearsals for Lear. When I, the actor playing Lear, got a first glimpse of the world that this production of King Lear will create. Design decisions shape a performance significantly.
Saturday 24 October
I love the line in Henry V, when Mistress Quickly is describing Falstaff’s death, and says ‘’a babbled of green fields’.
Unfortunately, the fully alive Falstaff did quite a lot of babbling in yesterday’s run-through of Henry IV Part I, and it’s unnerved me. This morning, I tried to analyse why some of my lines went awry; it’s important to figure it out, as I try and cram the new role of Lear into my head. Maybe it’s because it’s so long since I originally learned Falstaff’s lines, investigating the meaning of every word, and so long since we originally rehearsed the plays, investigating every moment of every scene, that I’m just on autopilot now, and that’s dangerous. When I practise the lines, I rattle through them effortlessly, but that’s just like exercising at the gym, it’s just muscles working – memory muscles – there’s no thought involved. But in the pressure of a run-through, you’re suddenly wide awake to what you’re saying, and find you don’t know what on earth it means. It’s just that funny old language called Shakespeare again.
God, the work on his work is never-ending.
Sunday 25 October
Lunch at the theatre’s Rooftop Restaurant, with the novelist Robert Harris and his fifteen-year-old son Sam. Harris is enjoying a big success with his Cicero trilogy, and Greg is interested in adapting them for the stage (a natural follow-up to the RSC’s version of Wolf Hall),and to include it in the Roman Season he’s planning for 2017. Harris, a charming man with a ready laugh, seems keen too. He’s also here today to see a special Sunday matinee. It’s of Henry V, to commemorate the Battle of Agincourt, which happened exactly six hundred years ago today.
Before the performance, Greg bounded onstage, and made a rousing speech. I watched, standing at the back. Then, feeling I’d seen the show enough times, I strolled home.
Tried phoning South Africa, but couldn’t reach Verne. She must be watching the Rugby World Cup again, even though South Africa lost to New Zealand in the semi-final yesterday, so they’re out of the tournament. I love the thought of Verne being able to lose herself in these rugby matches.
Greg returned from the show to report that it ended with rapturous cheering, flowers being thrown, and a standing ovation.
Tuesday 27 October
Blimey. My Shakespeare roles are returning to haunt me from every direction:
During the run of Salesman, I did an interview for the BBC arts series Imagine. Because 2016 is the big Shakespeare year – the four-hundredth anniversary of his death – several novelists were asked to write new works based on his plays. Howard Jacobson chose Merchant of Venice, and so I was filmed talking to him about Shylock (which I played at the RSC in 1987). The programme is on this evening, and in the Guardian’s TV listings, it says: ‘Jacobson also speaks to Antony Sher, whose Shylock infuriated many for playing the money-lender as the script demands, rather than searching for redeeming features.’ Complete bollocks! The redeeming feature that I searched for and found was that Shylock’s story is that of the persecuted turning into the persecutor. In the early part of the play, we showed him being humiliated very graphically – spat on and beaten – and then when his turn came, his revenge was even more violent. It’s an extremely familiar, extremely ugly syndrome in human behaviour. I’d better watch tonight’s programme…
Lear-learning this morning, with my improvised lectern facing the big field, which was alight with sunshine and autumn colours. It struck me that Lear and Falstaff are both portraits of old age; deeply perceptive, though deeply contrasting. Given that the two of them are in my system at the moment, I can’t help noting how different their speeches look in my scripts. Falstaff’s speeches are in prose, fat and wide on the page, big blocks of verbiage: wild, wise, funny, stupid, spiteful, scared. Lear’s speeches are in verse, and on the page they’re like tall edifices of iambic pentameter, drumming with power, burning with fury and curses. And then later on they’re like Falstaff again, just wise and scared. Just two old men…
The Shylock programme. My main contribution was okay, but in the last stretch became more controversial, not about the role but the play itself. Since Shakespeare wrote it, the theme of anti-Semitism has, for obvious reasons, developed a tragic weight, which unbalances the other story, Portia’s story – that romantic comedy about choosing caskets and losing betrothal rings. In fact, after the brutality of the trial scene, the froth of Act Five (the ring-losing caper) is virtually unplayable. The programme countered this argument by showing a sequence which the recent Globe Theatre production (directed by Jonathan Munby, with Jonathan Pryce as Shylock) added to the end: Shylock’s conversion to Christianity, which was part of his sentence at the trial. All productions try to find some image to sour Act Five’s frivolity – either with Antonio (the sad gay man) or Jessica (the outsider in Portia’s world) left alone onstage – but I’ve never seen any solution as brilliant as this baptism scene, with Shylock helpless against the full might of Christian ritual and choral chant. It was so good, I think it should be made compulsory for all future Merchants.
Wednesday 28 October
‘Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!’
…There is no other speech in Shakespeare which can make an actor feel more inadequate. Lear is arguing with a storm. You – whoever you are – whether born to perform English classical theatre, or some presumptuous interloper from overseas – you are not up to arguing with a storm.
London.
Westminster Abbey. The service to commemorate the Battle of Agincourt. All a bit solemn and slow, until… Sam Marks did the St Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V. (Alex was on a short holiday, and Sam is his understudy.) The actual tomb of Henry V is behind the High Altar, so when Sam stepped out from there, in full costume and armour, it really was like the king’s ghost arriving. Sam then did the speech walking up and down the central aisle:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…
Both Greg and I were, shamelessly, in tears.
Saturday 31 October
Greg’s brother Mark and his son Will came to stay with us in Islington, because they had tickets (at £500 apiece) for today’s Rugby World Cup Final at Twickenham.
After they left for the match, we decided to watch it on TV, and try and understand why the whole globe is so obsessed by this tournament. (I was thinking of Verne, of course: her excitement right now, dispelling pain and fear.) The match was between New Zealand and Australia. The New Zealand team began with the haka. An astonishing thing to watch in this day and age – Primal Man. But then, with neither of us understanding the rules, the game itself became boring. Both sides are so powerful, they prevent anything from happening, or at any rate just keep the same things happening repeatedly: a group of big men running around and jumping on one another. This holds no sexual frisson for me. However, one man took my eye, not so much for his looks as his talent. He was on the New Zealand team, his name was Dan Carter, and he did all the penalty kicks (if that’s what they’re called). He had a ritual each time. Infused with a particular inner concentration and outer stillness, he stared at the ball for a while, then at the goalposts, as though making some precise mathematical calculation between his foot and these things. Then he kicked. And, out of many times, he missed only once. I love watching skill like this! Think of the hours and hours of practice. Sportsmen and athletes… you see it in opera singers and ballet dancers too… I don’t like to say this, but it makes acting look rather easy.
New Zealand won.
Monday 2 November
Misty morning, everything milky grey. Though Greg pointed out that the cherry tree at our London home, when in its last glimmer of life before winter, has leaves so golden they light up the garden even when the sun isn’t shining.
Emailed Ronnie Harwood to congratulate him on the TV film of The Dresser, which was shown last night. Anthony Hopkins was particularly fine as Sir, the grand old Wolfit-like actor who’s playing Lear. I’ve never seen the play as such a stark naked portrait of acting – its terrors and madness. Ronnie actually worked in Wolfit’s company, and was indeed his dresser, so I asked him, ‘Was Wolfit as frightened as that?’ The reply came: ‘No, D.W. was NEVER frightened.’ (Dear God, he must have been from Mars.)
Verne rang with bad news – her blood count was too low for chemo again. When they are able to resume, they’re going to try a different, stronger chemo, which can discolour the face. All I could say was, ‘Be strong. You are.’
Thursday 5 November
I’ve finally stopped pretending that it isn’t a problem, and had my shoulder examined by Professor E., whom my osteopath pal Garry Trainer recommended months ago, and whom my GP, Dr P., says is the leading ‘shoulder man’ in London. On Tuesday, I went for an initial consultation with Professor E., had X-rays and an MRI scan (a horrible business, it’s like being buried alive), and today returned for the results. They weren’t encouraging. Professor E. explained that the problem was a mixture of rheumatism and what he called ‘wear and tear’ – the yank in the Salesman stage-fight was simply the final straw. On the MRI scan, he showed me how the tendon between my shoulder and arm bones was very diminished. Shoulder surgery for this condition has an unreliable record of success, he said, and so he could only offer a strong injection of steroids. But even in the taxi home, I knew that the shot wasn’t working with its usual effect – I’ve had these before, for various injuries – and that the movement in my right arm remained pretty limited. What does this mean for the future?
How odd that this is happening while I’m preparing to play a man with failing strength.
Friday 6 November
Worked on Lear’s last scene. ‘Howl, howl, howl’ is, like all of Shakespeare’s most famous lines, very intimidating to speak aloud, and as for ‘Never, never, never, never, never’, the Arden edition informs me that it is ‘perhaps the most extraordinary blank-verse line in English poetry’.
Saturday 7 November
I’m going to be doing Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3, where the guest has a half-hour slot every day for a week, talking about their favourite music. One of my choices is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – entirely to do with seeing the Pina Bausch dance company perform it at Sadler’s Wells in 2007. Today, we watched a DVD of Wim Wenders’ documentary Pina, which shows a lot of Rite of Spring. Very elemental. It makes you sit forward, half-excited, half-fearful. Those fast rushes of bodies, the men bare-chested, the women in little slips, all getting soiled as they roll over the earth floor onstage. Part of its power, Greg observed, was breaking the rules of dance: the performers make noise – panting, and slapping their arms. The film showed extracts from Bausch’s other mini-masterpiece, Café Müller,which we were also lucky enough to see on that day at Sadler’s Wells. It’s disturbing and surprisingly funny. Like the lady in red high heels who goes clip-clopping this way and that, not sure what’s going on or what to do about it. Much of Bausch’s work is about the dysfunctional nature of human relationships, with couples attached yet falling apart, passionate yet automatic. One of the most striking sequences shows a single, very passive woman surrounded by a group of very active men, who touch her with little exploratory gropes of her arms and legs, or silly twiddlings of her nose and chin. Nothing is explicitly sexual, yet the impression is of gang rape, and violence. What a genius Bausch was.
Saturday 14 November
I’ve put on weight, and my suit no longer fits. We went into town to buy me a new one, and then, dismissing weight worries, ended up having lunch at The Wolseley on Piccadilly. I’m always excited by their menu because they have Jewish dishes – like chopped liver and chicken soup with noodles – though these never live up to the memory of my childhood food.
During the meal, I suddenly said, ‘I was wondering if we should get married…?’
Greg looked up in surprise, then said, ‘I’m sorry – is this you proposing to me?’
‘Well, it’s just that… we’ve always said that civil partnership was enough… that the word “marriage” didn’t matter, it’s the law that matters… gaining next-of-kin status, and so on… but I’ve been thinking… now that marriage is available, don’t we sort of owe it to those people who’ve really fought for it, for whom it’s really important, full equality… don’t we owe it to them to get married?’
Greg paused, frowning with thought, then said, ‘I’m sorry, but – shouldn’t you get down on one knee?’
‘In The Wolseley?!’
‘Yes!’
‘It’s not very Wolseley, so no I won’t. But I will later.’
After twenty-eight years together, marriage is no big deal, but we agreed that it might be a fine thing to do on the tenth anniversary of our civil partnership, 21 December.
Back at home, we set up the timer on the camera and took a photo: me on one knee, proposing to Greg.
The smiles were wiped off our faces by the TV news. A terrorist massacre in Paris last night. Attacks on a concert hall, the Bataclan, and elsewhere. They said 130 were dead, many injured, a lot critically. There were accounts of people unable to find their loved ones, and the morgues saying it would take days to identify the dead. Can you imagine? After our discussion at lunchtime. Can you imagine?
Saturday 21 November
Finally got to see The Father, which began life in Bath’s tiny studio theatre, the Ustinov, and has grown into a major West End success starring Kenneth Cranham. His character was a living-room Lear – except that his mental condition definitely was Alzheimer’s. The theatrical depiction of the disease was brilliant: the other characters denying or challenging what you’d just seen with your own eyes – until you yourself weren’t sure – and the set itself slowly vanishing. I found the experience very upsetting.
Wednesday 24 November
Greg’s birthday. My ‘younger lover’ is now fifty-seven!
Friday 4 December
Over the last two days, we’ve had run-throughs of both parts of Henry IV. Because of the new people in our cast, particularly our new Hotspur (Matt Needham, who’s going to be terrific), and all the rehearsal time they’ve needed, I’ve hardly been called at all, yet now suddenly found myself doing run-throughs. It’s the closest real-life experience I’ve ever had to the Actor’s Nightmare, the one we’ve all nursed, cringingly, in our sleep:
I’m onstage in a play… not sure what it is… everyone seems to think I know what I’m doing… but I don’t…
Anyway, aside from this terror (and the years it’s taken off my life), the runs were okay, and I didn’t dry once.
Sunday 6 December
My current loo-reading book is Gielgoodies!, an anthology of John Gielgud’s wit, wisdom, and infamous gaffes. At times, his images are quite surreal: ‘Do you know what a circumcised cock looks like? Yul Brynner in a turtle-necked sweater!’ Of his ill-fated Lear at Stratford in 1955, designed by the Japanese sculptor (and furniture designer) Isamu Noguchi, he said, ‘I’m terribly worried about this costume. I look like a Gruyère cheese.’ Which was, unfortunately, spot-on. The extraordinary thing is that this was his fourth Lear, and he co-directed it with George Devine. In other words, he was completely in control of everything in the production. So you have to ask: how did such an experienced actor/director end up looking so foolish? It’s a troubling thought.
Greg had a Lear design meeting with Niki Turner. He invited me to sit in. I asked him to check if Niki was happy with this. She was.
She had brought along a model box and presented some images. Many chairs. In neat rows for the first ceremonial scene, and later arranged around tables for the dinner at Goneril’s home, which Lear and his knights could upturn during the family row which happens there.
The forest of chairs was impressive (a Pina Bausch image), but was it enough for the big theatre?
They were cleared for the blinding of Gloucester – in a glass box, like from a Francis Bacon painting – and then the back wall lifted to show an expanse of nothingness for the second half, perhaps with one stark, Godot-like tree.
But where was the storm? Some big idea for the storm?
Niki put a big piece of silver paper into the back of the model box, explaining how it could be the storm weather, pulled around or blown by wind-machines, and illuminated by flashes of lightning and moving shafts of smoke.
I watched, fascinated, as Greg and Niki began to develop the idea.
What if the stage floor was a giant piece of tarpaulin, and what if it got hoisted up to become a kind of sky/cliff for the storm, and what if Lear climbed onto it (i.e. a platform hidden under it), reaching a mid-air place for ‘Blow winds’?
Things became more and more exciting.
Lifting the stage floor to create the storm, and then lifting the whole back wall to create an expanse of nothingness for the second half… these would make for simple yet epic stage images.
I admired Niki’s openness, accepting the changes, embracing a new concept.
‘Oh yes, that’s one of her great assets,’ Greg said after she’d gone.
We went to Islington Town Hall this morning, to ‘give notice’ that we’re getting married.
The bad news was that because our passports are still at the American Embassy, getting visas for the tour, we couldn’t be properly identified or arrange anything. We’ll have to wait till the passports come back.
The good news was that we’d got it all wrong: we didn’t need to go through any of the usual procedures for marriage; already being civil partners, we didn’t need to ‘give notice’, didn’t need a ceremony or even witnesses, and there was only a small, token fee. Their reasoning was that if there had been a marriage option ten years ago when the Civil Partnership Law came in, everyone would’ve chosen that instead. Now they’re making the transition as effortless as possible.
‘Just think of it as an upgrade,’ said the cheerful receptionist behind the desk.
Saturday 12 December
Dress rehearsal and first preview of Henry IV Part I at the Barbican. It was like a matinee day – because of my long make-up, I was in the theatre from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wow, the fat suit came as a shock again. After a year away from it, the heat and weight was truly punishing. And my bad arm caused all sorts of adjustments to the action; I had to ask the other actors never to grab or pull me on that side. But the preview audience was tremendously warm, our newcomers did really well – Matt as Hotspur, Sarah as Quickly – and I’m pleased to report that Falstaff was very popular again.
When Part II also enters the repertoire, life is going to become much easier for me. Falstaff is in only two of the four-play season we’re calling King and Country (Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V), so I’m going to have whole nights off, whole weekends off… !
Sunday 13 December
On the phone to Verne I mentioned that we’ve invited Randall to the villa in Italy where we’re staying next May. I added, ‘We would invite you and Joan too, but I know you can’t travel because of your medica–’
She interrupted, ‘Oh, don’t worry about me – I won’t be around then.’
I didn’t know how to react. I’ve never heard her put it so frankly.
Friday 18 December
I’m reading a book by Jonathan Croall (who edited Gielgoodies!)called Performing King Lear. Or rather, half-reading it, sometimes peering through my fingers, like at a gruesome operation shown on TV. It’s a collection of interviews with actors and directors who’ve staged the play, and there’s quite a lot of bad news. Peter Brook talks of it as a mountain whose summit has never been scaled, and how, on the way up, you find the shattered bodies of those who’ve failed to get there: ‘Olivier here, Laughton there; it’s frightening.’ (Ironically, Brook’s production with Scofield did scale the summit, and has become the one that everybody has to match themselves against.) But I yelped with delight when I read Prince Charles’s comment after seeing Adrian’s 1993 production with Robert Stephens: ‘There is one thing I’ve learned from this play: don’t abdicate!’
Saturday 19 December
Over dinner tonight, I mentioned the Croall book, and how Brook was influenced by Kott’s essay, King Lear or Endgame’. I went on: ‘What if we did something like… the stage is bare… this whitefaced figure comes on, clicks his fingers, the action begins… it’s the Fool obviously… then, after his so-called “disappearance” from the play, he remains present, a silent witness… at the end, he clicks his fingers again, and…’
‘White-faced?’ said Greg, sighing; ‘That’s so corny.’
I sat back, stung. He leaned forward impatiently:
‘Tony – you just want a white-faced Fool because that’s how you played the part. You’ll have to get used to the idea that the Fool is not going to be how you played it.’
We went silent. The taboo subject – my performance of the Fool – had been mentioned. Then we talked of other things.
This is going to be tricky.
Greville Janner has died. While the scandal unfolded around him, medical experts said he wasn’t aware of what was going on. If so, is it just a coincidence that he’s died now? Or did he feel the strain of it, somehow, through the fog? What a strange, uncomfortable case. With strange, uncomfortable echoes of Lear.
Thursday 24 December
Still reading the Croall book. Olivier first played Lear in 1946, aged thirty-nine, though his view of it is so shallow it could be from a much younger man: ‘One of the easiest parts in Shakespeare… it is simply bang straightforward… he’s just a stupid old fart.’
He played Lear again in 1983, aged seventy-five, in a Granada TV version. I don’t know what he thought of the old fart by then. But I, like most people, admired his performance more for its courage (he’d battled illness after illness) than for its revelation of the role.
Sunday 27 December
We’ve just had a very quiet, very happy Stratford Christmas: splendid meals, a walk every day, and a fire constantly lit in the living room. And only one guest: Richard Wilson (actor and director). An extremely generous guest. Having already sent us a box of fine wines – seriously fine – he arrived with a great batch of DVDs. The latest films (including Carol, Brooklyn, Legend, 45 Years and others). He gets sent them because he’s a member of BAFTA and votes for the awards. So we watched a DVD each evening. Richard suggested a good rule – that we pause the film after twenty minutes, and check whether we all wanted to continue. We did… mostly.
Tuesday 29 December
Despite my excitement about our marriage tomorrow, today’s two shows – Part I this afternoon, Part II this evening – made for very tough going. Shakespeare’s plays are all too bloody long…!
But at the end, both Owen Horsley (associate director) and Emma Taylor (wig mistress) made a point of popping in to wish me well for the big day. I was very touched.
‘We’re gettin’ married in the mornin’,
Ding-dong the bells are gonna chime…’
Wednesday 30 December
Over the last week there’s been appalling flooding in the north. During the night, the bad weather hit London: wind and rain lashing the house.
‘It’s the Old Testament God,’ I say to Greg when we wake; ‘it’s Jehovah warning me not to go through with this abominable deed today.’
We discus whether to wear suits and ties, but compromise with a more comfortable, smart-casual look. Then we have a little wedding breakfast – bacon, eggs and a glass of champagne – aware that we won’t be eating again till this evening: we’re driving up to Stratford after the event. Now the wait for our appointment (at 11.40 a.m.) suddenly seems very long, especially since I’m suffering from postmatinee-day fatigue. We get fed up sitting around, and go early.
In the Registry Office, as well as our passports and a current bill proving our address, we also have to produce our certificate of civil partnership. ‘Oh, the marriage certificate isn’t nearly as nice as this!’ says the receptionist, and giggles.
Now the Registrar appears: Mrs Hamit, forty-something, warm and relaxed. She mentions that one of her colleagues had seen and enjoyed the Henries and is envious that she can’t ‘do’ us today. It’s nice, in the circumstances, to be mini-celebs.
‘Well, let’s go and do your conversion,’ she says, and leads down the corridor.
As we follow, I whisper to Greg, ‘I’m not sure I was expecting to be converted.’
As Mrs Hamit takes us into her office – a very plain room in a shade of municipal beige – she explains that the procedure is officially called a One-Stage Conversion from Civil Partnership to Marriage. She says it’s quite long. I don’t think she adds, ‘and quite boring’, but she could have done.
We sit there for about an hour, while she fills in form after form, typing into her computer. Occasionally she checks a fact with us, and at one point remarks on the sexism of the law: only our fathers’ details are required. (I’m amused that Dad is recorded as being both ‘retired’ and ‘deceased’.)
I think back to our civil partnership on 21 December 2005, the first day of the new law. It was in the same building, but in the grand Council Chamber a couple of floors above. It could’ve held several hundred people, but we had only invited about twenty: close family, and four close friends – our two Richards (Wilson and Sharples), and two special ladies, Thelma Holt and RSC producer Denise Wood. Among the family members, like Greg’s older brother and sister, Mark and Jo, there were also some international visitors: Verne and Joan had come over from South Africa, and Greg’s twin sister Ruth and her husband Tony had travelled from their home in Denver, Colorado.
Greg’s father John was present too: aged eighty-six, and with advanced Alzheimer’s. We half-feared that when it came to the point where the Registrar – a Ms Mendez-Child on that day – asked the congregation if anyone here knew of any lawful impediment why these two should not be joined in union, John might suddenly stand up and cry out, ‘Yes – they’re both men!’
Ms Mendez-Child was probably as nervous as we were on that day, because, of course, she had never officiated at a civil partnership before. When it came to the rings, I was about to fit Greg’s onto his finger, when she said, ‘No – you put it on the left hand.’
‘No,’ replied Greg; ‘It’s a Russian wedding ring – you put it on the right hand.’
She broke into a grin: ‘Oh, put it where you like!’ Which made everyone laugh.
(In the evening, we held a big party at South Africa House, in a fabulous room that overlooks Trafalgar Square.)
Now here we are, ten years later, back in Islington Town Hall, but in the basement, sitting in silence, looking round a room where there is nothing to look at, and with Mrs Hamit diligently tapping away at the keys of her machine: the quiet little noise of bureaucracy plodding forward.
I think: how can such a momentous event be so dull? The world is changing before our eyes – a law has been created that allows us to get married. There should be trumpets and drums, great fanfares…
Then I think: no, this is good, in fact, it’s incredible. In other parts of the world, different laws are in operation, primitive laws of stupidity, hatred and fear. In some places in the Middle East, gay people are stoned, thrown off high buildings, or hanged from cranes. Yet here we are, getting married, and it’s so unremarkable that we can afford the luxury of being bored. How bloody wonderful that at such a moment we’re bored!
Suddenly Mrs Hamit is finished, and prints out the marriage certificate, explaining that it’s back-dated to the day of our civil partnership. So, like it or not, we’ve been married for a full decade. ‘Congratulations!’ says Mrs Hamit, leaning forward to shake our hands, and offering to take a photo of us holding the certificate. Which she duly does.
Back to the reception desk, where we pay £49 (45 for the procedure, 4 for the certificate), and then upstairs to the entrance lobby, and out onto Upper Street. The weather is still foul, with people hurrying about under their umbrellas, scowling at the sky. A typical winter scene, everything very ordinary – except for the fact that we are married.
At home, we pack the car and drive through the rain to Stratford. When we get there, we open a bottle of posh champagne and toast ourselves silly. Discuss whether we’ll call one another ‘husband’. Are we to be ‘husbands’? I quite like the sound of it – it overturns the most basic premise of my upbringing, and triumphs over all the shit I’ve had to deal with since – but Greg is less sure.
Much later, sitting in front of the telly, with a fire blazing in the hearth, I glance over to Greg and see that he’s sleeping. His hand is resting on my knee, and my hand is on his shoulder. It always fills me with a tender sensation, seeing him asleep at my side. I remember a very promiscuous friend of ours saying that sleeping with someone is far more intimate and important than having sex with them. The trust.
I gaze at Greg. He is safe, I am proud. A good moment. A good day.
