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AS: Was it because… I think, at that time, the Royal Shakespeare Company was the most internationally celebrated European company?
IR: Well, what happened to establish its reputation in that respect happened in 1964, when the Arts Council and the British Council and the RSC - as we then were - signed a deal, and we were the first Shakespearian company to go behind the still existent ‘Iron Curtain’. And we started off in Berlin - West Berlin, we did not play East Berlin - then we went to Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, then back to Belgrade, then Warsaw, then Helsinki, then Leningrad - or St Petersburg as it is now - then Moscow. And then from Moscow we flew - in deep snow - to America, and we landed in Washington D.C. and it was the day of the Cherry Blossom parade and we were all wrapped up in scarves and sheepskin coats and fur hats, and the temperature was already so hot that the flags were beginning to crack! And we played Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and New York. Now, that tour took… oh, I can’t remember how many months, because if it was an important date like Moscow we would play two weeks, whereas in other places we would only play one week. But nevertheless it took an awfully long time! But by the time we came back, so great had been the established… the reputation as an international phenomenon that had been established, that the Queen invited the Company to perform in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. She didn’t want King Lear because that went on too long, but the companion piece was The Comedy of Errors. And the companion piece was there because Paul Scofield - who was playing King Lear - didn’t want to do King Lear eight times a week; it’s not on, it’s not easy to do that. And so he wanted a companion piece that would play to give him the nights off, I think… He only did four performances a week, which was very clever of him. At all other times we did The Comedy of Errors which was equally, equally successful. And Kosygin, I remember, came and Mikoyan - and these are names totally unknown to you, but they were in the Politburo…Kruschev was away in fact - when he came back it was to face the fact that he was being ousted from power [Laughter] - but he left messages. I mean, it was just extraordinary! And then we performed for the Queen and the entire Royal Family doing The Comedy of Errors, and that really said ‘the RSC’s international reputation was being acknowledged by the Sovereign, here, in the oldest castle…’ you know… one of the oldest castles in…
So that was it - we were in. Well, I left… I stayed for fifteen years off and on. I took some sabbaticals out, because by this time, well, we were all testing the waters - to use the metaphor - of film and television just to see what it would be like. Because my children were growing up, and I was faced with school fees that had to be paid, and the RSC didn’t pay that much money, you know… And so I left, I left on a couple of occasions and went off and did something else, but I always came back. Until, in 1975, I left for good. And I have not returned at all, except to do a recital programme with some friends of mine called The Hollow Crown, which is about the kings and queens of England, which we did in the large theatre. And I’m glad I did that, because when I went up to Stratford the other day there, the whole of the auditorium in the old theatre - which I remember so well – is being ripped apart and modernized. So I’m glad I did The Hollow Crown, because there I was on the platform which had seen me arrive as a young twenty-five year old, and it waved good-bye to me some, you know, fifteen years later as a quite a senior stager in the English theatre. I’m glad I did that…
But we have to move on, and now there is a situation whereby… I remember - and this might interest some of your young students and people who are interested - I remember when I played Hamlet - and Richard II too, and all those parts where you have soliloquys to address out front. What I used to do was I’d focus on a suitably placed ‘Exit’ light - you know, they… always above doors ‘Exit’, and it’s always lit so that you can see it - and I used to focus on the ‘Exit’ light because it meant that I had no distraction with someone shifting in their seat or opening their programme or whatever. And I used to just direct it all out there…Well now what they are encouraged to do - and certainly in the Richard III I saw the other day - is the… not only do they talk to the audience, direct face to face, but they actually get the audience to participate by giving them a placard to hold or a piece of tape - you know, like they put round a traffic accident, the police tape, that yellow tape. And this kind of physical contact, not only eyeball to eyeball, but touching as well, was completely not done in my day! [Laughter] I’m sure it’s the way things are going, but I’m just very old-fashioned. I belong to the old school and I just have to get used to it, you know…
AS: I just had one question, you played one of the most interesting roles for the Aldwych, Jean Marat in Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade. Was it tempting to come from Stratford to Aldwych and play completely different plays?
IR: Yes, it was. It was, because apart from anything else, the Aldwych was a showcase for the company, but it was also a showcase for the actors in that company. Now, if West End producers, film and television producers - and they have now become very much a part of our lives by the time I’m talking about, the late sixties, early seventies, you know. It was a showcase for the actors to be seen by these people, because - and not to be seen just doing Shakespeare – because, well it’s happened with me, they would say ‘Richardson, yes he’s quite a good actor, but he just does Shakespeare, we don’t want him!’ which is devastating, you know… So we enjoyed doing modern works, although Marat, of course, is the French Revolution! [Laughter] But I mean, to actually wear trousers and be able to put hands in your pockets was something so unheard of to us Shakespearians that it was rather nice, you know. In fact, I still haven’t got used to the idea of putting my hands in my pockets - even when I make films and televisions and things like that, I find that I’m… I just don’t put my hands in my pockets, [Laughter] because of wearing Elizabethan costume, or period costume anyway…
The Marat/Sade… Well, what happened was I… Originally when that was done, we’d just come back from the world tour I was just talking about, and Peter Hall who directed the King Lear with Scofield - Peter Brook, I beg your pardon, who directed the King Lear - was terribly anxious to keep this company together. It’s quite a large company, not as many as a hundred knights, which is what it says in the text - there weren’t quite as many as that but there must have been about fifty of us, you know! And so he kept this company together - with the exception of Paul Scofield, who didn’t want to have anything to do with the Marquis de Sade, thank you very much! - and so that part was played by Patrick Magee, a brilliant Irish actor - alas, no longer with us. And I originally played the Herald, who was a kind of glorified Master of Ceremonies, done very much in the Commedia dell’Arte, and I banged the stage with my stick crescendo-ing it you know, and then the play began and all this, you know: before every announcement, changing the scene - verbally - I used to bang my staff again and say, ‘Charlotte Corday visits…’, ‘Charlotte Corday’s first visit to Jean Paul Marat’. And down would come Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday. Well, what happened was we played it very successfully, and then it came off and the Americans wanted it on Broadway. And the actor playing Marat absolutely categorically refused to go to New York with it - I don’t know why - and so Peter Brook, nothing daunted, took me away from playing the Herald - which was a part I loved - and put me into the bath as Marat, and I was totally miscast. And I was very unhappy. And we then, we took it to New York, where we were a wild success and we played for six months, which was unheard of on Broadway! And we were all going absolutely mad doing this extraordinary play night after night - to packed houses, you couldn’t get seats for it. And we were all beginning to go a little mad after a while.
The rehearsals were quite extraordinary because we had sixteen weeks in all - which in those days… not so unheard of now, but in those days was completely unheard of. And for the first eight weeks we didn’t touch the text. We were all invited to go and explore insanity in the towns, the suburbs or whichever… wherever we were living. And I remember that I made contact - and became very friendly - with the director of the Tooting Beck Mental Institute. And he actually took me on a tour with my wife - because she was in the play, she was acting in those days, she was playing one of the inmates - took me on a tour of… Not the seriously mentally ill people, because they were dangerous, but just on a little trip round. And the extraordinary thing about going to a mental institute is, apart from the seriously ill people, the people who are allowed to walk about - although not go outside - they appear to be completely and utterly normal. Until you listen to what they are saying. And there was this one girl - very pretty - who saw me coming along the corridor with the director of the institute and said: ‘Oh Doctor, you must please get my boyfriend away from that butcher’s shop where he’s working!’. ‘Well’, he said ‘why should I do that?’. She said, ‘Well, he has already cut off three of his fingers, and he keeps cutting them all the time!’. And of course it was totally untrue! But she, in her imagination, thought of her boyfriend cutting his fingers off. And you suddenly do a mental and physical double-take on this pretty thing, and you suddenly realise she’s completely nuts! So what we would do after, we would all come back to rehearsal, sit in a circle on the floor with Peter Hall - Peter Brook, rather - in the middle, and he would point and they - whoever he pointed to - would give their homework, which meant recounting a tale of insanity that they had come across. And of course I was able to tell this story that I have just told you, and as I say, I became very friendly - and I still am, although he’s retired now - with this doctor, this psychologist and he’s a great fan of mine, and he and his wife come and see me and other things. But I created quite a sensation by telling them about how natural some of the people were until you heard them talk. So what we had to do - is this interesting for you by the way? - what we had to do was, Peter would say, ‘Now, next week…’ - this is after six weeks - ‘Next week I’m going to ask… I’m going to cast the play. Now, you all know that Patrick - Patrick Magee - is playing Marquis de Sade, and Glenda Jackson is Charlotte Corday, Ian Richardson is the Herald…’ - as I was at that time - ‘but the rest of you have not been cast yet. And when I do cast you, I want you to tell me if you think that the character-study of insanity you’ve been working on is capable of doing the demands that will be asked of you in this performance’. For instance, we performed it, as it were, in a bathhouse. And he said, ‘Do you think that your person has the mental and psychical capacity to lift one of the duck-boards…’ - the coverings over the bars – ‘and make it into a guillotine knife?’ you know, for one scene. And that person said, ‘Oh well, no, you see, because I’ve worked on this man who’s got a fixation about transferring a piece of string from his left-hand pocket, across his fingers and into his right-hand pocket, and then back again and out and you know…’. And then Robert Lloyd - who was playing Jacques Roux - saying ‘Well, I can’t do anything, because I’m in a straightjacket’. And so we were all given parts - I didn’t get, but the others got parts given to them according to the capabilities of the form of insanity they had been working on. And that’s how it was done.
Interview continued...
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