By
Patrick Pacheco
Derek Jacobi, the distinguished actor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, is applying the last of the makeup that will transform him into a classic figure of the Bard’s muse. He is talking of Gielgud and Olivier, of the challenge, of the inspiration.
Just then, a gorilla bursts into the dressing room, waving a bouquet of
balloons.
The “gorilla-gram” is one of the many birthday greetings—stacks of
cards, flowers, balloons—that threaten to crowd him out of the dressing room
altogether. Jacobi, just turned 46,
listens good-naturedly as the obviously nervous young woman in the suit cracks
bad jokes, sings songs and blows a whistle at the finale.
Then the distinguished actor kisses her, and applauds.
Derek Jacobi is not unlike the Wizard of Oz in reverse—all the fire and
thunder of a dazzling creation when the curtain goes up, yet a shy, insecure,
modest actor. He blushes with
embarrassment at the critical raves he has garnered, as Edmond Rostand’s
Cyrano de Bergerac and as Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much
Ado About Nothing.
The two RSC productions, at the Gershwin Theatre through Dec. 14, have
added luster to a hitherto drab Broadway season.
They both demonstrate striking ensemble acting, and Jacobi deflects
praise from himself to the company and his costar, Sinead Cusack.
Nonetheless, this RSC stint on Broadway spotlights the gifts of this
particular actor, who most Americans know through his title role in 1979’s
13-part TV epic, I, Claudius.
Indeed, the performances give added credibility and weight to the
often-repeated claim that Jacobi is heir apparent to the mantle of such titled
thespian nobility as Laurence Olivier and John Geilgud.
Jacobi is clearly uncomfortable at hearing it again.
“Embarrassment is the only reaction one can have,” he says.
“You can’t take it seriously, it’s just something that makes a good
story. It certainly doesn’t make
things any easier. Being acclaimed
is dangerous; you can’t fall below what the public expects.”
Jacobi goes on to explain that when he was first considered for the Royal
Shakespeare Company—and rejected—20 years ago, he lacked the experience and
training that has made the past 2½ years
with the company so rewarding. “But
the one thing I did have then was confidence.
I had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
I have gnawing doubts about my talents, and it gets worse.”
Such statements are even more surprising against the backdrop of bravado
and virtuosity of Jacobi’s Cyrano. It
is a Promethean role that he alternates with Benedick, and he displays a
“photographic memory” for retaining the long passages of Anthony Burgess’
lyrical translations of Rostand'’ classic.
The actor tosses off the poetry and passion with such elan that it is
understandable why an opera singer once referred to him as “the man who speaks
in arias.”
Yet unlike Cyrano, who is all brashness and panache in facing his
enemies, Jacobi observes that the time he spends in the wings waiting to go on
are “utter terror, with the certainty that the voice will be gone and all will
be lost.
“It is a gift after all,” he says, “and perhaps it will disappear
as quickly as it appeared. Yes, I do get frightened in front of 1,800 people, but once
I’m out there on the lighted chandelier, fencing and spouting verse, the nerve
returns and builds on itself.”
Jacobi, the only son of a department store manager and secretary,
developed the gift in English Repertory Theatre.
At age 24, he was discovered by Olivier at the Birmingham Repertory, and
he became the youngest, and only unknown, among the eight founding members of
the National Theatre. After eight years with the company, he left to achieve
further distinction with widely acclaimed performances on Oedipus, Richard II
and Hamlet, the latter two televised by the BBC.
An undistinguished career in film (The
Day of the Jackal, The Odessa Files, The Human Factor) has kept the actor
unsullied by Hollywood by default (“The phone didn’t begin to start ringing
after I, Claudius”).
So when, 20 years later, the RSC decided to right its wrong, Jacobi was
anxious, if a bit rusty, for the challenge of creating four starring roles. After being cast for Peer Gynt, Prospero in The Tempest and Benedick, RSC codirector Terry Hands asked Jacobi to
suggest a fourth. He lost no time
in mentioning his desire to play Cyrano.
“Terry warned me that of the four, that was the most dangerous for me,
and one I was least prepared to play,” Jacobi recalls.
“I’m rather placid by temperament, and Cyrano has all this rage and
anger. Benedick is much more like me, but Cyrano was the
challenge."
Jacobi says that Hands brought the rage out of him during rehearsals by
frustrating him at every turn. “It
was impossible! He kept goading me,
saying no matter how well you do in the others, if you fail as Cyrano, it will
put your career back five years. He
brought out the anger in me and brought my acting up enormously in doing so.”
Jacobi says he was first attracted to the Cyrano legend not because of
the romance but because of the rejection. “I’ve
always felt like I knew what Cyrano was about, what he was feeling.
Those dual emotions of: Don’t
look at me, don’t look at me, and I dare you to look at me. When rehearsals started, [Hands] asked me, ‘Do you know
what it is like to be really ugly,’ and I felt like, yes, I do, because
between the ages of 12 to 17, I had the most appalling case of acne, long before
the time of male cosmetics. So at
the school dance, I remember the same dual emotions—don’t look at me, or I
dare you to look at that big boil on my forehead.”
The actor’s mobile features account for a versatile range of roles,
from the romantic and naïve to the scheming and malevolent (“Who would have
thought I’d ever play Hitler?”).
Jacobi maintains that he is “much more at home playing people who
don’t look like me. I’ve got a
hangup about my looks; they’re not very good for the stage.
I’ve got a pudding of a face—moon shaped—and my hair is too
fair.”
Under such circumstances, Cyrano’s elastic proboscis is a godsend.
Jacobi’s Benedick is much more like him in looks and temperament, and
as such he feels more naked onstage. His
is a rather plucky interpretation of Shakespeare’s famous misogynist, who is
thrown together with an equally man-disparaging Beatrice.
“The thing,” explains Jacobi, “is to make Shakespeare accessible,
contemporary, intensely human. The
minute the audience starts thinking ‘art, culture,’ you have lost them and
the richness of the plays.”
Totally dedicated to his craft, he recalls that he was bitten by the
stage bug early on, at age 6. “Most people grow out of that make-believe
stage, but actors have one foot in the cradle—that hotline to a child’s
imagination, emotion and sense of fun. Not that we’re Peter Pans.
It’s just that a lot of us spend time ignoring, hiding, suppressing the
child’s openness. The child has
it all and shares it all.”
Sharing it all has left the actor, resolutely unmarried, with little time
for personal life, which he describes as quiet.
“A life in the theater is not an affluent life.
I would love to make a really big movie, or I wouldn’t mind to try a
Broadway musical.” Brightening,
he adds, “There was a recent crazy 24 hours when I was going to play Za-Za in
the London production of La Cage aux
Folles, but I’m not a singer, at least not for that score.
“But the theater is my home. I’m
a workaholic really, acting is a compulsion.
You need to do it.”
What keeps that compulsion fresh for Jacobi, what renews it year after
year, drafty dressing room after drafty dressing room, are the challenges of new
roles, the glorious and limitless possibilities of the classic text, the
inspirations of great directors and acting companies.
The actor puts down the make-up pencil with which he is lining his eyes
to say, with deep conviction: “Whether
the mantle of Gielgud and Olivier is falling on you or not is unimportant.
What is important is the play
and playwright. People respond to
the work, not to me. To be given
Cyrano, Prospero, Benedick and Peer Gynt! They
all have to be played full out, not as demonstrations of acting excellence, but
because they’re all really wonderful people, wonderful human beings.”