By Blake Green
Newsday, May 9, 2000
Sir Derek Jacobi comes highly touted, his reputation being,
well, let Todd Haimes, the Roundabout Theatre's Artisitc Director, elaborate:
"First, he's an extraordinary actor, who's tackled some of the most
difficult plays ever written with incredible distinction.
And, he's one of the most wonderful human beings.
The combination makes him almost unique."
Similar reverence, different wording, from
Michael Mayer: "Based on his work, I'd made certain assumptions that
he'd be lovely, generous , kind. But
you never know.
"To my
great relief, he was every bit what I'd assumed," Mayer quickly discovered
in directing Jacobi in the title role in Roundabout's production of "Uncle
Vanya".
And, when the
British-born actor Roger Rees, a "Vanya" costar, participated in an
on-stage conversation with Jacobi for a March program, arranged by the
Shakespeare Society in Manhattan, he unabashedly informed his fellow countryman,
"You're my hero."
Nightly at the
Broadway Brooks Atkinson Theatre, audiences break into applause when Jacobi
enters the set, which is designed as the crumbling Manor House on a late 19th
Century Russian County estate.
This, a
compliment he politely but emphatically insists he'd much prefer didn't occur
(it's much more an American tradition than English), turns out to be the only
time it's possible to single out for appreciation the shy and self-effacing
star. Jacobi refuses to take a solo curtain call, instead insisting that the
cast of Anton Chekov's play (which also includes Brian Murray and Laura Linney)
move as a pack for their bows.
It is Jacobi's
first appearance on the New York Stage in well over a decade (1987's Breaking
the Code was the last time) and critics, somewhat lukewarm this time about this
"Uncle Vanya" as a whole, have been effusive in their praise of the
actor.
A tall man whose
florid complexion turns positively crimson when Vanya explodes in a fury that
life has passed him by, the 61 year old actor has sprouted a Vandyke and
mustache for the role, and is wearing his red-going-gray hair as a pixiei-sh
cap. So closely associated with
Shakespeare and other classical roles-"I'm basically a doublet-and-tights
man," Jacobi says, when discussing his failure to transfer his enormous
stage success to films- it's momentarily startling to find him in his dressing
room, dressed in trendy, all-black attire,
Intensely
private, but with exquisite British politeness, Jacobi seems almost embarrassed
to discuss subjects such as fame- the type of accolade he prefers is a simple
"thanks a lot" from a man who passed him in the street this afternoon-
and the 1994 accolade that attached "Sir " to his name;
"I certainly don't use it," ("Sir," however, was what
Jacobi always called Laurence Olivier, even after they became friends.
"I just could never bring myself to call him Larry.")
But he wouldn't
mind having a go at a fortune, he says, explaining," You don't ever make
money in the theatre; the only wealth actors are film actors, which is why I'd
like that experience."
Jacobi has made many films, but most of his role
have been "way down on the rungs of the ladder", he says.
Best known was the 70's television mini-series "I, Claudius,"
that introduced most Americans to him. (He played the stuttering emperor, a
convincing speech impediment he revived for Alan Turing, the British scientist
instrumental in breaking the German military code in World War II, who was the
focus of Breaking the Code, also make into a film for television in 1996.)
The actor was
"more deeply involved "in the 1998 "Love is the Devil", in
which he played the artist Francis Bacon. Currently,
movie audiences can see him as a Roman Senator in "Gladiator, and as
"A Quentin Crisp type" in "Up in the Villa."
An only child of
parents who were "what they call 'in trade,'" he was "spoiled
rotten'", his early interest in theatre completely indulged.
As an adult, he says he has a cottage in France and a Victorian house in
London and likes to garden in both.
Having a
ringside seat at the so-called Golden Age of English Theatre, Jacobi is a
veritable repository of vignettes about theatre legends-"one delicious
anecdote after another" says Mayer. In
the early '60's, Laurence Olivier invited him to joint the National, Britain's
repertory theatre; for his debut,
he played Laertes to Peter O'Toole's Hamlet; his first Vanya was as the understudy to Michael Redgrave
in a production directed by Olivier.
Nevertheless,
Jacobi insists he has no desire to write a memoir-"Oh, it'd be too
dull," he says modestly, although Haimes suspects the reluctance comes more
from the actor's nature: "The standard form for an autobiography these days
is to be mean and bitchy and that's just not him."
Jacob's
Shakespeare has ranged from Lady Macduff (when he was a lad at boy's school) to
Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (the role that won him a Tony
Award in 1985).
He's played
Hamlet five times, including the production in his late 30's that inspired a
teenage schoolboy Kenneth Branagh, to become an actor and led to the mentor-protégé
relationship much lie the older actor enjoyed with Olivier.
Jacobi's first Royal Title -the Danish order of the Dannebrog- came after
a production of
"Hamlet" at Elsinore in Denmark attended by that country's Royal
Family.
But it was the role of Cyrano de Bergerac,
which, like Benedick, he played in repertoire here and in London, that he
considers his favorite; "It's a genius play that offers an actor
everything: Comedy, tragedy,
every nuance. It requires
huge vocal technique, physical technique, huge spiritual and physical resources. It taps into everything an actor wants to be. It's sublimely
poetic.
"I'd like
to do more contemporary plays, but that's just how the cookie has crumbled,
Jacobi says. "In the classics,
you're always compared to all those other people who have played the role;
whereas, in a new play, there's nothing to be compared with.
You're creating and dealing with a living dramatist."
This fall,
Jacobi is scheduled to star in "God Only Knows" in London, a new play
by Hugh Whitemore ("Breaking the Code"), and a draft of the script lay
open on a table in the dressing room.
Memorizing new
lines-"getting the words inside of me," is how he expresses it- while
nightly sprouting old ones might seem daunting. But not to this actor.
He frowns slightly, mechanics not something he enjoys discussing.
"It should be seen, not talked about," he says of this most
ephemeral of occupations.