By Hap Erstein
The
Washington Times
Say his name and you get either a blank stare for a response or a nod of
recognition from a fan of “I, Claudius,” the popular public television
series in which he played the title psychopathic Roman emperor.
Hardly a household name on this side of the Atlantic, Derek Jacobi is the
reigning star of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and—according to the
effusive praise of the normally stingy theater critics in London and New
York—he may be the finest actor on the stage today.
With a build-up like that, with audience expectations jacked into the
stratosphere, it’s no wonder that this 46-year-old London-born actor claims he
approaches each performance with an acute case of stage fright.
Keeping that sense of terror foremost in his mind is what drives his
performances.
“If you start believing your own publicity or your own good reviews, I
think you’re on the slippery slope to believing that what you do is
necessarily good,” says Mr. Jacobi. He
speaks in a near-whisper, in part to save his voice for that evening’s show
and in part a reflection of an off-stage introversion that appears genuine.
“I think what is essential is this continual self-doubt that each time
you have to prove yourself. A
continual fear that tonight is the night I won’t get it right.
I’ll be seen to be bad. They’ll
see through me; that it’s a fluke.”
But tomorrow night, the first performance of Mr. Jacobi and the RSC at
the Kennedy Center’s Opera House is likely to keep his reputation perfectly
intact. He will play Benedick, the
young lord of Padua, the lead role in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About
Nothing.” Next week he adds to
that his title performance in a new Anthony Burgess translation from the French
of Edmund Rostland’s “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
It is a double dose of versatility that has inspired awe and undoubtedly
will net him this year’s Tony Award, but it is only half of the
hat-trick-plus-one he pulled off last year for the RSC’s London season.
In addition to the two plays that have been exported, he dazzled his
countrymen as Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and as Ibsen’s
“Peer Gynt.”
That may make this American tour (the Los Angeles Arts Olympics last
summer, Broadway, and now Washington) sound easy; but Mr. Jacobi thinks of it as
a higher concentration of Cyranos, an exhausting 3½ hours of high energy and
emotion.
“For me, it’s like running the marathon,” says the sandy-blonde man
who looks at least a decade younger than his years, despite his protestations of
being weary and having a cold. “When
a runner eventually breaks the tape at the end of the marathon, every nerve in
his body is screaming and crying. That’s
kind of like me in ‘Cyrano.’ It’s
agonizing work. You have to reach
out in all areas of yourself—psychologically, mentally, emotionally,
physically—until you get to a kind of screaming point.
“By comparison, Benedick is nowhere near as draining.
I see performances of ‘Much Ado’ as kind of healing time,” he says,
popping a throat lozenge into his mouth and reaching for a Kleenex.
The thought comes to mind that a good nasal cold could be an asset in
playing Cyrano, owner of the most famous nose in dramatic literature.
“It would be lovely for Cyrano,” he concurs, “but it’s hopeless
for Benedick. The show tonight is
‘Much Ado’.”
If this tour is a personal triumph for Mr. Jacobi, it is due in large
part to his director Terry Hands, co-artistic director for Trevor Nunn of the
Royal Shakespeare Company. Mr.
Hands knows his actor’s insecurities and orchestrated them masterfully to lead
Mr. Jacobi towards his Cyrano.
“He kind of put obstacles in my way,” says the performer.
“Not physical obstacles, mental ones.
To make me fight. To make me
angry. ‘The big thing about the whole idea of your playing Cyrano,’
he said, ‘is you’re not perfect casting.
Looking at you, you wouldn’t think, What a great Cyrano he’d
make.’”
Thanks a lot, Terry.
“Cyrano” was the fourth of the roles Mr. Jacobi played and his
director wanted to make sure the pressure would be on.
“He said, ‘All the productions have gone well and you’ve had a
personal success in them, but if you don’t get this
one right, you can discount all the others.
If you bomb on this one, then your career goes back five years, you start
again.”
“Wonderful,” says Mr. Jacobi sarcastically, remembering his
director’s scare lecture. “So
there’s this huge mountain on my shoulder.
It’s a wonder I didn’t get lopsided.”
It’s a wonder Derek Jacobi goes out on stage at all.
Why does he do it? “Well,
I couldn’t earn my living any other way.
I’d be on the streets,” he says.
“The only gift I’ve got, the only talent I was given—and it was an
instinctive one—is acting. And I
love to do it. Although I say
it’s agony and although it frightens the stuff out of me, I enjoy it.
It’s a touch of the masochism, I suppose.”
“There is a difference,” he offers, “between being in love and
loving. I fall in love quite
easily, and I love a lot of people, but I think there’s a degree of
selfishness in me that says I’ve got to be on my own, that I’ve got to be
ultimately my own master.
“To have dependents and passengers . . .” his voice trails off with
the thought. “I can’t cope with
getting myself through life, let alone dragging a wife and family along.”
It sounds like the story of a workaholic, a man who truly lives for his
work, and in Mr. Jacobi’s case, really only comes to life when he is on stage.
“I kind of flourish, I’m at my best, I think—oh it sounds like such
a cliché to say it, isn’t it—that my work is my life.
But there is something to it.”
He says he has no idea why he was attracted to acting, there being no
trace of show business in his family. He
is the only son of a department store manager and a secretary.
But he began in preschool, Mr. Jacobi remembers, “dressing up in
parents’ clothes to join the local library and their dramatic society.”
No reviews survive from that auspicious debut, but he continued learning
his craft through to his university days. Afterward,
instead of more formal education at the theater academy, he joined up with the
Birmingham Rep, an established classical company outside London.
After toiling in the boondocks for two years, gradually working his way
up to the lead roles, the call came to join the major leagues of the RSC—or so
Mr. Jacobi believed. “They
offered me a job, designated three parts and then I was called over to, I
thought, just kind of meet everybody. When
I got there, they said, ‘We’d like you to read for Ariel,’”
recalls Mr. Jacobi, pronouncing the role like it was the stupidest request
he’d ever received.
“They handed me a script, said I could look at it for a few minutes and
I went on stage and read it . . . appallingly. At the end, [director] Peter Brook came and said, ‘That’s
fine. We’ll let you know.’
Then I got a note which said, ‘We don’t think you’re ready for the
RSC after all.’”
Dejected, he returned to Birmingham and talked them into giving him his
job back. “I was ready to throw
myself among the Birmingham canals.” But
good luck eventually was with him. During
the Rep’s 50th anniversary, he was playing the title role in
“Henry VIII,” when Laurence Olivier saw a matinee on a scouting trip.
Sir Laurence liked what he saw and offered Mr. Jacobi a job with a new
theatrical company. That company
eventually became Britain’s official National Theater, where Mr. Jacobi stayed
for the next eight years.
Derek Jacobi’s star kept rising, to the point where English critic
Sheridan Morley recently called him “Britain’s most romantic leading
classical actor since the long-lost 1950s,” comparing him favorably to the
stage heyday of Richard Burton.
Mr. Jacobi reacts with pained embarrassment.
“That’s total rubbish. No,
because—was that said?—A) I don’t look like a romantic actor; B) I don’t play
romantic parts, really. Benedick,
yes. Cyrano, yes.
But come along, since the ‘50s? No.
There were so many actors in England.
It’s one of the things we do well.
It’s a very good export.”
To him, though, such a statement is the sort of hyperbole that
journalists thrive on. “The
English press is very keen on comparisons,” he offers.
“There’s always the best this or the thinnest that or the loudest
whatever. They’re always
comparing who’s going to be the next John Gielgud or the next Paul Scofield.
It’s too easy, but it sells newspapers.
If you asked any theatergoer, ‘Do you think Derek Jacobi is the most
romantic actor since the ‘50s?’ they would think you are mad.
That contemplates matinee idol and sex appeal and all that.”
Well, he has been amassing a cluster of Derek Jacobi groupies around the
stage door at the Gershwin Theater in New York and the same could well happen at
the Kennedy Center. Doesn’t he think he has sex appeal? “No,” he says, again at his most emphatic.
“Well, if I have, it’s an added by-product.
I’m not peddling it. And
I’m getting too old for it anyway,” he insists.
“I mean, if they told me that 15 years ago, then I could have used
it.”
It is not surprising that he has not heard these compliments and
superlatives, because he goes out of his way to avoid his reviews.
“Because I find that you only remember the bad ones,” Mr. Jacobi
explains. “Like in England last
year, I made the mistake of deviating from this principle and I read one for
‘Cyrano’ and one for ‘The Tempest.’
They were both horrendous.
They thought I was rubbish. They
thought the productions stank. It
was the same man who did both. Obviously,
I’m not his favorite actor. But
that is the one I remember. I
cannot get it out of my head. I can
quote it to you verbatim.”
Unread by him, at least until this engagement is over, are the dozens of
favorable reviews the company has been showered with in America.
Perhaps the RSC is that good, or perhaps it is our bias toward the
British. “I think there’s a
deal of liking us because we’re foreign-made.
I think critics here are very harsh on the home-grown product.
It seems that when Americans try to do Shakespeare or try to start
repertory companies, they’re ganged up upon.
They’re told, ‘Leave it to the English.
The English are so much better. You
stick with Tennessee [Williams] and Eugene [O’Neill].’
“I think a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder.
I think you give us a head start and sometimes you shouldn’t give us so
much. I mean, it’s lovely, but sometimes I can understand
American actors saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon, we’ve got to have a chance
too.’”
When Americans tackle Shakespeare, though, Mr. Jacobi agrees that we tend
to be too reverent. “I think a healthy disrespect for the scholarly approach is
very good,” he advises. “If you
want to shift the punctuation to make it mean something else, then shift it.
We don’t know what the punctuation was.
I think that makes it more accessible and understandable.”
But Americans treat Shakespeare’s plays as if they were handed down on
tablets from Mount Sinai. “Americans do tend to treat it a little biblically,” he
offers. “A voice comes over them,
a posture comes over them. It’s
deadly, absolutely deadly.”
Therefore, it is up to the Royal Shakespeare Company to prove to
audiences just how entertaining classical theater can be
“It’s a huge responsibility for us, to make sure they ain’t
disappointed. Because if they are
disappointed in the Royal Shakespeare, who else stands a chance?
‘Well, we saw the Royal Shakespeare and they were a load of rubbish, so
we’re not going to see anybody else.’ So
there’s a great responsibility that they do enjoy it and that they come out at
the end of the evening liking Shakespeare.”
Where will Mr. Jacobi go after his two-year marathon with these plays at
the RSC? “Holiday or sanitorium,”
he jokes. “Oh, my ambition over
the years has kind of dimmed,” he says with a sigh.
“I started out being terribly ambitious, but I don’t feel at all
ambitious now. I want to do lots
more classical work. I would like
to be able to have the sort of career that balances theater with film. And also to act in England and in America.
That would be ideal—those two places and those two media.”
It is curious, when you consider Mr. Jacobi’s acclaim in television and
on the stage that he has few offers and even less success, in the movies.
Perhaps it is rationalization, but he is ready with an answer. “I would say that I would be very difficult to cast in
movies. What would you cast me as?
I’m not Robert Redford. I’m
not yet Karl Malden. I’m not
heavy character [actor] and I’m not heavy lead.”
But that doesn’t really explain it, why he hasn’t had the celluloid
career of, say, an Albert Finney—who has a very similar background, being
another alumnus of the Birmingham Rep.
“Oh, Albie’s very much a leading man, particularly in his youth,”
Mr. Jacobi corrects the comparison. “Twenty
or 25 years ago, when Albie made it in the movies, he was a very humpy, hunky,
husky young actor, who had the looks and the charisma that Richard Gere has got
now.”
And where was Derek Jacobi in those days?
“I was still mewing and puking in my cradle,” he says with an arched
eyebrow and a hearty laugh. “Well,
not quite. When Albie was doing that, I was biting my nails, envying him
so much. I was a Birmingham Rep.
If you look up Derek Jacobi in the film reference books, you will find
listings for a handful of minor parts in minor movies:
“The Odessa File,” “The Human Factor” and “The Day of the
Jackal.” “What films I’ve
done have been very subsidiary roles. I’ve
enjoyed that up to a point, but I find filming is desperately dull unless you
are totally involved all of the time.”
“It hasn’t happened and I don’t mind if it doesn’t,” he avers.
This time it is the interviewer’s turn to raise his eyebrows, and Mr.
Jacobi quickly recants the statement. “I
would love to do just one, to know what it feels like to be Tony Hopkins for a
day.”
Without those leading roles on celluloid, the best work of Derek Jacobi
eventually will fade into memories. The
question becomes, especially with all the extravagant
praise being heaped on him this season, how good an actor is he?
Will Derek Jacobi be ranked with the greats of the modern day or be a
tiny footnote for a brief flashy repertory stint with the RSC?
“This is where I go very quiet, because I can’t think in terms of
posterity,” he says, retracting again into his shell of timidness.
“I will make as big a contribution to the profession I’ve chosen as
I’m allowed to make, given the opportunities that come my way in the course of
a lifetime. I can’t assess it
myself, I’ll just do it. I
don’t do it for the acclaim. I do
it to fulfil a need that I have—not just a desire--but a need to act and to
entertain and to carry with me the audiences that see what I do.”
But the philosophy of repertory theater is so ingrained that his chief
concern is audience enjoyment of the play, not the player.
“If people leave the theater saying, ‘Oh, what a good actor.
Wasn’t he good,’ that’s not enough.
They should leave the theater saying, ‘What an evening. I’ve been on a journey.
What I felt this evening’.”
“OK, so in this particular instance I’ve got the most to say, most to
do, I’m in the limelight more than the others.
But I can’t do that without everybody else doing the best they can
every moment. So ultimately those that pass the judgments on what sort of
actor I was, when I’m gone, I will leave it to them.”
Pleased to be rid of the subject, Mr. Jacobi turns to the mirror to begin
applying his Benedick makeup, to lose himself once more in his characters.