Will's Marathon Man
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In his dressing room at the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Alan Howard after the mightiest performance as
Coriolanus: wrapped in a short white bathrobe he was courteous, dazed. He
defines these coming-to, post-performance moments as vegetable time. This
week's The South Bank Show homes in on the man who has been called the
best Shakespearian actor alive today. Also on view: little spine-tinglers from
his Henry V, Henry VI and Coriolanus.
Alan Howard, a friendly, chatty man, is cool
before the cameras. He pops in his contact lenses, makes up, dresses up, blows
his nose and moves off to storm that well-known breach once more. He knows
whatever he says won't give away the mystery of what makes a lion of an actor.
When the talking is done, Alan Howard just is. |
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Alan comes from a nearly ancestral theatre family,
dating back to the 18th century. His great-grandfather was actor Edward
Compton. Howard's father is comedian Arthur Howard. His mother was actress Jean
Compton Mackenzie, his great-aunt the legendary Fay Compton. The even more
legendary film star,Leslie Howard, was his uncle. Yet, with all this
barnstorming in his blood, Howard really came to acting through school.
Ardingly, in Sussex, brought Howard to Shakespeare, and Shakespeare brought
Howard to the stage. It's almost as if he relies on the Bard to help him get
his head together. In return, Howard does his best for Will.
Unpacking Shakespeare is Howard's continuing
fascination. He says the Royal Shakespeare Company read through Coriolanus
slowly for two weeks to dispel hard-held conceptions. "This play is just tipped
iinto our laps. How do you cope?," Howard wonders. "Go on, cope. Shakespeare
doesn't conclude things. He keeps asking question after question. If we're
really honest we keep ourselves open and questioning about something that
happens to us, someone we meet. If we don't, we're tied-up and middle-aged by
the time we're 35."
Howard, who is 40, lives with journalist Sally
Beauman. They have a three-year-old son, Jamie. During the season, Jamie stays
with his father in Stratford while Sally Beauman works in London for half of
every week.
Howard says they both find this a strain but when
they meet there is a three-hour chat and argument and bambam and all that,
which is terrific.
"I get a bit tired but it's a good price to pay for
tiredness. One sees things, is aware of things which are Shakespeare-given."
Asked how Sally likes taking second place to Shakespeare, Howard replies she's
pretty good at Shakespeare herself.
Lean and tempered with all those swordfights and
fallings-about, Howard declares he never keeps fit by pattern. "I do the
plays," he said with feeling. "Rehearsing all day and playing at night is a lot
of miles to walk. They say a performance is equivalent to a minor car accident
in terms of shock."
The damp Warwickshire air does little good to Alan
Howard, who rather hankers after his new London house in Holloway. He catches
cold, catarrh lingers. But, as with most actors, his best cure is, as they say
in the profession, Dr. Stage. "You forget illness on the stage, although it can
come zapping back at you in the wings." When Howard had intestinal flu during
A Midsummer Night's Dream in Cardiff, he did a speech from the top of
the gallery, got out of view, threw up and went back.
He finds learning lines difficult. "Lines is hell."
He is never quite sure why he undertakes so many plays at a trot. In the
present RSC season he has been on nearly every night in Henry V,
Henry VI (played over three evenings in three parts) and
Coriolanus. When there are matinees, he works twice a day.
He has no system for remembering these marathons. He
just has to sit down and learn and it doesn't get any easier. "If I 'go', which
I sometimes do, I'm not bad at finding another word which doesn't radically
alter the sense. Sometimes I talk absolute nonsense, iambic
knitting."
All skilful actors, and there are a good many around,
must boast technique, diversity, stamina. Perhaps what brings drama critics to
strew words like stupendous all over the stalls after an Alan Howard first
night is that Howard seems to have taken it upon himself to represent our
current age of anxieties.
Not for him an iron Henry V or a Coriolanus who is
flat-out vain. Even Howard's physical characteristics can contradict each
other. As he exists grandly, Howard's sandy hair can bob gently like Rowlf the
Muppet's ears. His most braggart stance is often accompanied by more than a
touch of the shakes . Doubting beautifully, never nobler than when uncertain,
Howard proves Shakespeare the most modern playwright we have.
Alix Coleman
TV Times, 28.1.1978.