(No details I’m
afraid of where or when this article originated - although date would be late
1976)
Michael Pennington
has been playing Mercutio (Romeo
and Juliet), Hector (Troilus
and Cressida), Edgar (King Lear)
and Major Rolfe (Destiny) in the Royal
Shakespeare theatre’s Stratford-upon-Avon season which ends on Saturday. A
volume of his songs appeared in 1972, and his account of a journey through
Siberia is in preparation. (Rossya)
‘King Lear’ is the last word on everything, and an
afternoon spent amidst its extremities is quite enough for one day. But this is
Stratford; and compound logistics require of me tonight a fluent transition to
the barracks and high-rise offices of ‘Destiny’ at The Other Place, a few
hundred yards up the road.
As a boy I remember a theatrical knight describing
a day in the typical actor’s life as 10 hours in a film studio, then a hire car
to the West End to play – ‘King Lear’. I wouldn’t mind, I thought then,
becoming “typical.” Well, perhaps this is it, in the style of the Seventies:
stumping through the Waterside gardens with a carrier bag, adjusting double
fast with hardly a cup of tea between. Not complaining mind; just being
typical.
London. Salaam. Things feel so good in Stratford
that the call of the capital seems stern. The Earl of Kent stays behind in
Chipping Campden, but the more metropolitan-minded hit the A40 in column by
midnight on a Saturday. The road is dangerously familiar by now and Woodstock
goes by in a dream.
The day of rest spent making shelves and learning
‘How Yukong Moved the Mountains.’ Workers whose parents could probably not read
discuss ideological a priorism in a Shanghai generator factory. So? Much of my
unoccupied time these days is spent sifting for the purposes of publication
through the perplexities brought on by a visit to the soviet Union; and the
impassiveness of the urban Soviet worker seems currently to add up to as much
or as little as the comprehensive cheeriness of the Chinese – a proletariat
whose propaganda springs unforced from the heart.
Finally agree contract for RSC’s Newcastle season
in March. A number of actors are still declining to renew their contracts
unless offered ‘Titus Andronicus’ next season, but mostly stayed together for
what may turn out to be a positive pleasure. A wealth of extra-curricular
projects being aired, to fill in the acres of spare time we shall have between
putting on eight shows in four weeks. I offer a Thomas Hardy programme and a
new version of Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman.’ I must be crazy.
The theatre dark on Mondays now, as a concession to
the fastnesses of winter; though the popular plays are still doing such good
business it’s probably not necessary. This gives me a full, though displaced
weekend. Evening therefore spent doing anything but getting started on the
Gogol – and restraining a literary agent from commissioning a new translation.
Working elevenses at Moo Movies, design home of the
new book, and the best cheesecake in town. Then, fortified, back to Stratford
for the last performance of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ preparing for Hector used to
take me two hours; now, by some extension of Parkinson’ Law, the same make-up
takes an hour and three quarters.
Stratford’s welcome is sparsely warm: bright frost
on the trees, the Avon swollen and fast. Fairy lights on the horse chestnuts in
front of the theatre. The streets still thickish with visitors, though mostly
from Birmingham and Bristol – I’ve not had to discuss the Queen Mab speech in
Finnish for some time now. I miss it; public feedback here is instantaneous and
unforced in a way it rarely is in London.
Returning home after the show, fetched myself a
crippling blow on ye olde low wooden beam in my cottage. Mercy, will I never
learn?
A full day on the trans-Siberian. Have pulled the
manuscript back from the brink after re-reading it and not liking it quite
enough. Time presses. The new corrections will have to be in green – the top
copy begins to look like a travelling lease. Roger Rees’s marvellous drawings
of the journey cover the walls; hard to believe he’s never been near Siberia
and they all came out of an evening’s talk and a bottle of Tequila. The
self-inflicted setback is a small one, and, by evening, am confident again of
having done some justice to an unforgettable journey.
No show for me tonight, and the adrift imagination
has planned supper for six on a scale altogether inconsistent with available
resources. Good though, and many matters discussed quite unsuitable for
publication in ‘One Man’s Week.’
‘Destiny’ tonight, and a group of black
schoolchildren in for a play about racial politics. Quietly received.
Almost season’s end; time to pack up and emerged
stunned into the bright light of a month’s holiday. I reflect on a nearly
completed journey, a terrific year. Strangers last January, we now have quite a
lot in common. Unpredictable nights, overwork, and finally more leisure; £70
telephone bills, failed vegetable plots, and the end-of-term party. There were
periods when the permanent set – part-timbered barn, part bullring – seemed the
natural hub and one sure home. Springtime, the swans, rare autumn colours;
Mercutio in a heatwave, Poor Tom naked in mid-winter. And of course the
standard green crockery and those brainshaking wooden beams. It’s what living
in Stratford is all about.
To bed, and hit my head again.