Christopher Edwards
Plays and Players
1983
Derek Jacobi about to play Cyrano at the Barbican where
his Benedick, Prospero and Peer Gynt are already in repertoire talks to
Christopher Edwards about these roles and the detours in his career before the
call to Stratford finally came.
Derek Jacobi’s recent Stratford season with the RSC was a conspicuous
success—he played Benedick in Much Ado,
the title role in Peer Gynt, and
Prospero in The Tempest. The transfer to the Barbican of all three productions will
complete his triumphant return to the British Stage after several years in front
of the camera. Critical attention
will, however, be focused on his next new role with the RSC—Cyrano in a
specially commissioned translation of Edmond Rostand’s masterpiece by Anthony
Burgess.
I met Derek Jacobi for lunch recently at the Barbican; we talked about
his career and in particular about his attitude to the new role . . . ‘It’s
a play that’s always fascinated me. I saw the National production with Edward
Woodward in 1969, and I think now is a good time to do it again.
It’s a very moving work—with three extraordinary human beings at its
centre—and for me personally it’s a challenge as I don’t think I’m
obvious casting for Cyrano. The
part has acquired—like Benedick and Prospero—through successful
performances, and age which it doesn’t have. Sinead
Cusack and I don’t play Benedick and Beatrice as middle-aged although there is
a tradition of doing it like this; you know, if they don’t get each other they
won’t ever get anyone. Likewise
Prospero, which has become accepted as a trial run for Lear—he is a Duke, a
magus and has to be gnarled; well, the question of his age is open—Miranda is
twice referred to as 15 years old, his wife is presumably dead—he is still a
vibrant middle-aged man. Likewise
Cyrano—it says in the text that Roxanne is his contemporary;
in the original someone describes Cyrano as a braggart and is replied to, in the
French, with the words . . . ‘c’est un garcon’; a boy.
Now he is one of the cadets—a senior cadet admittedly—but now middle-aged where they are young.
The point of all this is that what Cyrano envies about Christian is his beauty,
not his youth; Cyrano has that. Age
isn’t the problem in this play—it’s ugliness and the loneliness it can
bring.’
The question of appearances led us to consider the traditional physical
properties of classical actors—a point of particular interest to Jacobi who,
at 45, must be rated the leading classical actor of his generation.
He is small and boyish, and is willing to admit—with a healthy dose of
playful irony, that the subject has preoccupied him . . . ‘Yes, apart from the
question of height I’ve always thought that you had to be dark
too—dark with cheek bones. If
you’re blond like me and have a rather full round face it doesn’t stamp you
classical, historical, tragical. Good
for comedy of course. OK even for
Hamlet too—but most of the rest are saturnines with large eyes—not piggy
ones; I’ve had this thing that the afficionados will accept soul-searching and
deep emotion from the ‘other’ sort, but not from ‘this’; of course
‘this’ can be made to work, with well-applied Mary Quant.’
Jacobi read History at St. John’s College Cambridge and went more or
less straight out of the Malowe Society into the profession.
How did he accomplish this? . . . ‘Lots of us did it—Ian McKellan,
Clive Swift, Richard Cotterell, Trevor Nunn—it was known as the Cambridge
Mafia. In fact if anything, at the
end of the three years I lagged behind—some of them had agents
by the time they left. It was
either a case of going to Drama School—which I wanted, or straight to a
company. Don’t forget it was much
easier to become an actor in those days—you only had to find a job to get an
Equity card, none of this 42 week nonsense.
Also Cambridge, and Oxford, provide a veneer of professionalism and you
can get professional directors coming down and taking you through your paces.
I auditioned at Birmingham Rep, and went there; green from Cambridge into
this company of professionals who had been at it for a long time.
I was the new boy, the new girl was Rosie Leach.
At Cambridge you know, it’s easy to become a big fish in a small
pond—you go about with this little tin star; if you took any shred of that
with you outside you were done for. I
did a new show every three weeks at Birmingham for two and a half years; that
was my drama school. When I showed
I could work I was accepted.’
Although he started his stage career shortly after the ‘New Wave’ of
writers began around 1957 he has never really been associated with any new
writers . . . ‘Well, when the New Wave writers came along I was still learning
my craft so it wasn’t likely I would be asked; I wasn’t old enough or known.
Nor, of course, was I a Finney or a Courteney.
In fact I was an East Ender but I didn’t sound it—that was my
trouble. I long to do something modern—something that no one has ever seen
before, because then you can’t be compared.
As a classical actor you’re always contending with people’s received
idea of how, say, Prospero should be, and you have to do something pretty
extraordinary to change their minds. When
I was at Birmingham I did Jimmy Porter, and Mick in The
Caretaker, but when I left for Chichester which later became the National,
it was classics nearly all the way.’
Jacobi seems always to have been convinced that he would be an actor
. . ‘as far back as I can remember having conscious thoughts’ . . .
His parents took him to the cinema every week; he went through the usual phase
of dressing up in their clothes; by the time he first went to the theatre he had
already decided . . . ‘I acquired heroes later . . . Richard Burton was a huge
hero of mine. One of the greatest
thrills of my life was being taken on a Leyton County High School trip to the
Old Vic to see that marvelous season when Burton did Hamlet, Coriolanus, Henry
V. He was a colossus, he looked and
sounded wonderful; he had everything—to die for, to die for. I was an avid autograph hunter and caught him at the stage
door—I had to chase Claire Bloom down to the traffic lights to get hers.
Years later she played my mum in Hamlet. That time I did Hamlet with Prospect at the Vic gave me a
marvelous moment. Burton came to
see it and invited me out to dinner afterwards.
On the way out he said, do you mind if we go and stand on the stage . . .
standing there, with my hero of old, he having just seen my Hamlet, I having sat
up in the Gods to watch him . . .’
In fact of course there were
two
Hamlets with the Prospect Company—why did he choose to play the role twice in
close succession? Wasn’t he
satisfied with the first effort? ‘I’m
afraid you credit me with too much authority over my career. When I left the National in the late Sixties—in fact about
three years after I’d left, I bumped into Toby Robertson with whom I’ve been
associated off and on since the 1950s. Toby’s
great ambition with Prospect was to get it a London base, which he fulfilled by
securing the Vic—the story since then is, of course, history.
Anyway, he asked me to join Prospect—it was a seasonal company
then—and I said yes; I stayed for five years.
He had a tour lined up and he said it was about time I did Hamlet—this
was in 1977 and there was a long tour involved, to the Far East.
Then, 18 months later he had an offer to tour China and he wanted to
take the Hamlet—virtually the same production, and I went.
The thing about it was that it had to be a Hamlet for all seasons—for a
tiny space in Stockholm to vast amphitheatres in Tokyo, Peking and Melbourne.
It wasn’t a ‘personality’ Hamlet—though it was the one I had
inside me.’
On reflection I realized it had taken Jacobi a surprisingly long time to
join the RSC; surely it was a natural port of call for an aspiring classical
actor? . . . ‘Yes, I’ve waited a long time for the call. The natural
progression was from Birmingham to Stratford, and in fact I got
the call; I was going; they’d even cast me.
Then two months before I was due to arrive I was called over to meet the
directors; what they didn’t tell me was that they wanted me to read.
A copy of The Tempest was thrust into my hand and I had to read Ariel before
Brook, Barton, Hall . . . I read like a sick choir-boy and suddenly it was,
‘don’t call us we’ll call you.’ I
had to go back to Birmingham and ask for my old job back. It was my first and biggest disappointment.
I’ve calculated it’s taken me 22 years to travel twenty-four
miles!’
On a final note—and particularly bearing in mind that Richard Burton
had been his hero, I asked Derek Jacobi about the lure of the camera—the
money, the exposure, the acclaim. In
fact of course he has had a measure of it already with the television production
of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius. There have
been various TV series in America and, surprisingly an appearance—again on
American television—as Adolf Hitler in a life of Speer.
He agrees that film is a drug, indeed it was during a period of heavy
sedation as Hitler that he answered the RSC’s call to come to Stratford last
year. He also agrees that you run
the risk of losing your nerve if, as he did, you stay away from the stage for
several years. Yet—and I think
Alan Howard is another case in point—scratch a classical actor and you’ll
find an aspiring movie star beneath . . . ‘The movies . . . yes is my answer
to that; you know, there’s a little Ben Kingsley inside all
of us . . .’