McKellen and his foot soldiers
Richard III hits the road
The Sunday Times
22 July 1990
"The National is not as well known outside this
country as the Royal Shakespeare Company," said Ian McKellen, who is
about to lead a National Theatre company around the world. "In fact,
it's not easy to explain to people what its identity is. They think the RSC
is our national theatre."
He might have added that the same is true of many
theatre-goers who live outside easy range of the capital. In practice they
look on the RSC as their national company. The reason, in a word, is
touring. The RSC is a theatre which people outside London see and hear
about. With only three exceptions, no large UK city with a touring theatre
has seen a National production direct from the South Bank for five years -
in many cases more. Newcastle, which sees the Stratford repertoire every
year, has not been visited by the National since 1980.
Coming up to the end of his first two years as its
director, Richard Eyre is determined to make the National Theatre more truly
national. "If you're called National, the obligation to tour is
inescapable," he told me last week. And just as he was wondering how
best it could be achieved, Ian McKellen suggested that he would come back to
the South Bank, where he was one of the chief ornaments in the Eighties, on
condition that he could tour for a year.
That is why the building is now buzzing - and bursting at
the seams at previews - with McKellen's Richard
III. Together with Brian Cox's King Lear, it is sojourning
there for a month or two before setting off for Tokyo and the world
on a journey lasting until next March.
McKellen, whom Eyre describes as "in his
prime", is following up his acclaimed villain of an NCO, Iago,
with a supreme villain of the officer class, Richard Crookback of
Gloucester. Offstage he carries with him a somewhat patrician air of
leadership, a concern for the unity and welfare of his troupe, that should
stand them in good stead on their progress to show the flag, not only at
other national theatres in Paris and Madrid, but in places such as Prague,
Bucharest and Moscow. It was McKellen who insisted that the home capitals of
Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh must also be included, as well as Leeds and
Nottingham.
Most of his early years were spent on the road. It was
with the old Prospect touring company that he first electrified audiences
with his Richard II.
He founded the Touring Actors'
Company in the Seventies, and at the RSC
he revived the community touring of towns and villages without theatres -
which is now done with a 500- seat travelling auditorium. He led a National
Theatre company in 1986 to international festivals in Paris
and Chicago - the last time
it was seen at either of them. Nobody could be more fitted or committed to
the task of leading a company on the road.
McKellen comes from Bolton and owes all his early
experience of theatre to touring companies, in the days when these were
frequent visitors to Manchester and other northern towns. Touring on that
scale has long since stopped. "But don't let's be too romantic about
it. A lot of the tours that I saw were attempts, not to bring us the best of
British theatre but to boost the earnings of a show by dragging it round the
provinces. The management were either trying to get it right before it
opened in London or exploiting it after the London run with a substitute
cast. I wouldn't wish those days back on anybody. They were nothing to do
with the high standards and serious intentions which we have today.
"In Sir Laurence's day the National toured much more
but that was because he opened every play except one outside London. Othello
toured for eight weeks before opening. He used the regions in the way the
old managers used to do.
"But the National is funded by taxpayers' money, and
one of its obligations to the nation is, of course, to be seen outside
London. Richard Eyre made his name running regional theatres. The National
employs actors, including me, who retain their regional accents. And I can't
think there are many actors in this company who would be opposed to touring.
On the contrary, it adds a certain frisson to the air. The myth of actors as
rogues and vagabonds doesn't die ... as long as the vagabondage includes at
least a two-star hotel somewhere on the road."
So why doesn't it happen more often? If it is possible
for Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company, now barn-storming its way
north to Edinburgh for the festival, to have put on an eight-month world
tour in Shakespeare this year, or for Michael Pennington's English
Shakespeare Company to spend 25 weeks of the year on the road at home and
represent Britain at festivals in Jerusalem or Kiev, why cannot the National
Theatre do likewise? Had Glenda Jackson got a point when she said she would
close down the building and provide the National with a comfortable bus and
a large tent?
"It would be possible to hire the building out as a
conference centre and turn the National into a touring company. But that is
not the brief. The very concrete in which we now sit makes touring more
complicated than it looks. It's easier for Renaissance or Compass to tour
because they are designed for it. They haven't got to pay for the air
conditioning and the overheads of a home base. When we take out a large
company, audiences expect to see as nearly as possible the same production
as they would see in this building. Bare boards and a passion are not
enough. It means taking armourers, a wig department, dressers ... our whole
company numbers 58, of whom 23 are actors. The sets have to be built to
withstand travelling. So it's hugely expensive to get on the road.
"People want to see the current hits but it's also
impracticable to take them out of the repertoire - Racing Demon, for
example - unless you recast them with a 'B team'. But audiences don't want a
B team. They want the first team. So the way out of these problems is to do
what we have now done for the first time - to devise productions especially
for touring, although they are rehearsed, previewed and first performed
here." Last year the National plugged the gap by mounting
co-productions of The Misanthropist and The Beaux' Stratagem
with two regional theatres, and touring them.
The cost of the tour until next Christmas, before it
embarks for Eastern Europe, is £1.25m, a sum that could not possibly be
recouped at the box office. The National is not allowed to spend any of its
Arts Council grant on touring. So it must not lose money on the
enterprise.
It is not a simple tour to finance - by a combination of
government money and sponsorship, mainly by Guinness - but it is a very
simple one to sell, says Roger Chapman, the National's head of touring.
"With an actor of McKellen's stature I could place it anywhere. I had
two Broadway producers competing for it on the telephone." When Chapman
told him this, McKellen's reply was typical: "Why should we improve the
cultural life of New York when you haven't booked us into
Newcastle?"
When McKellen accepted his self-imposed task as tour
leader, he said: "Being me, the first thing I thought about was
personnel. I wanted a group whose commitment to one another as a company
would be reflected in their work on stage. The first question I asked every
actor was whether they would understudy. To understudy one another is good
for the company's community sense - besides, we can't afford to take an
extra 10 actors around to do it."
His democratic methods, which require any actor, however
eminent, to play a supporting role if need be, also apply to himself. Having
invited Deborah Warner to direct the King Lear she wanted (Brian
Cox), he offered to play any part she wanted him for, which turned out to be
the somewhat thankless role of Kent. He also understudies a (small) part as
a herald.
The other play took time to be resolved. It ought to have
been a modem one. "We found that modern plays just didn't cross-cast
with Lear, but Richard III did so amazingly well. Of course, I
soon realised why - both plays were written for the same company of actors.
I was then in the position of being able to invite Richard Eyre to direct a
play in his own theatre." The choice turned out to be a relief to
McKellen, who at first had not really wanted to play Richard III at
all. "I thought it was a distasteful play; but now it turns out to be a
wonderful play, in a production like no other that I have seen."
Recruiting the company for such an arduous, long-lasting
tour was not a quick business. There were many who turned McKellen down,
mainly for financial reasons. National Theatre money allows actors to
survive, but very few middle-aged actors with expensive family commitments
work there for long. They need TV series or films to bolster their income.
Peter Jeffrey, a prolific television performer, who plays Gloucester and
Clarence on the tour, signed on because, he said, "they were two parts
I badly wanted to play in places I badly wanted to see, and luckily my next
TV series is not due to be shot until just after the tour ends. I don't like
to be away from the classics for too long, but you often have to subsidise,
in effect, the theatre which can offer you classical parts." Some
people joined the company in spite of all family difficulties - Cordelia
Monsey, whose mother was the actress Yvonne Mitchell, is taking her
three-year-old child on the tour with a minder, at her own expense, rather
than miss her chance as assistant director.
Actors rarely end a tour in pocket. The standard daily
touring allowance is £31 a day, which does not cover a three-star hotel at
current prices. Foreign hotels are paid for, but even in Tokyo, where a meal
can cost £60, the daily living allowance is only £48.
McKellen obviously believes that all actors true to their
calling want to tour. "This is as good a group, on stage and off, as I
have ever worked with. They've taken on a year of very hard work - eight
performances a week in two mighty plays, with only one two-week break for
Christmas. High on anyone's list of reasons for joining must be their
commitment to a company and all that means. It's not a romantic notion. The
company - not a star system - is what the National Theatre is supposed to be
about."
His own attitude to giving up a year of his life to the
tour is enlightening. "I don't see it as giving anything up. What else
would I rather do with a year of my life? Nothing."
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