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from
THE NATIONAL…
A Dream Made Concrete
by Peter Lewis....
“I
had to fight for my life every night because he wouldn’t stick to what
we rehearsed.
If he gave me a wink, and he usually did, this wild Irishman, it
meant a very hard fight.
It was dangerous.
It was even dangerous to be sitting in the front row when he
flashed out his sword like Douglas Fairbanks.”
Sir
Derek Jacobi,
1990,
on his his dueling scenes as Laertes to Peter O'Toole's Hamlet
and
from STAGE STRUCK, a 1990 Interview
with Pam Clarke and Yvonne Parkin
(for the entire interview, click here)
Q: Do
you remember any stage accidents that you were involved in?
DJ: Oh, there’s lot of
them. Corpsing ones, and laughing ones, yes.
I had a very bad one with O’Toole on the end of it.
We were practicing the fight in Hamlet.
He didn’t like the fight that had been arranged.
He wanted to have more swash and more buckle in it, so he said
lets go up to the rehearsal rooms and work out our own fight.
So there was a lot of me slashing at his feet, and he’d jump,
and I’d slash at his head, and he’d duck.
Jumping onto tables and tables turning over.
Very Errol Flynn. So
we rehearsed it for several days, and then one day the inevitable
happened. I cut at his
head, and he jumped instead of ducking, and the sword went straight
across his cheek. It hit
with the flat of the sword, fortunately, so it just produced a weal.
It didn’t cut him, just a terrible red mark.
I was more scared than he was.
He took me out and gave me a brandy.
The next day I was called into Sir Laurence’s office.
He said, “I hear you had an accident yesterday.”
I said “Yes”, and I explained what had happened.
He said, “Well, it really doesn’t matter whose fault it was,
or how it happened. You do
realize that he’s a film star, and you do realize he’s only doing
twenty-eight performances, and he’s going off to make a film of Lord
Jim, and if you cut him they can’t photograph him.
So his agent has been on the phone to me, and there is now
insurance on him for 60,000 pounds. So
if you touch Peter with a sword you will cost me, and the National
Theatre 60,000 pounds. That was bad enough, but when we opened, the critics hated
it! Hated Peter. Hated
the production. And Peter,
who had been very good up until then and had gone on the wagon, went
straight back on the booze. So
it was a full text, and the fight didn’t happen until the end, so four
hours into the play Peter is absolutely cross-eyed, and looks at me
across the stage, and winks every night, and fights for his life, you
know. And I had to fight
for my life. The trouble
was it always ended with Peter getting hurt.
I cut his finger…. It was because I was, kind of, more nippy,
because I wasn’t drunk, and Peter had slowed himself down with drink. I remember he used to slash at the audience, too.
He used to go down to the front row, and slash at the front
row….
Q: To
the critics?
DJ: Hoping they were
critics! Yes.
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