music. It was a fantastically moving performance. I wanted to do something like that. In our production Richard received a brown paper packet with the boys’ pajamas in it and he smelled the pajamas, which smelled of talc and children. That I think is the moment when he switches off. He has no desire or need to communicate anymore to people outside the play. And so consequently that last soliloquy at Bosworth is fiendishly difficult and also comes at slightly the wrong time. I can understand why people cut it because that late on is the last moment you want a soliloquy. It’s a completely different beast.
6. Jonathan Slinger as Richard in Michael Boyd’s production.
Richard loves playacting, doesn’t he? As in the scene with the prayer-book. Presumably that dramatic self-consciousness is one of the keys to his charisma in the theater?
Alexander: Richard loves acting because he has fully absorbed the idea that one may smile and smile and be a villain. It seems amusing and hilarious to him how easy it is to dupe people, to experience up close their vanity leading directly to their gullibility. This dramatic self-consciousness makes him charismatic to audiences because he realizes they are more entertained by audacious, immoral, and downright wicked behavior than they would be by someone spouting pieties and lecturing them on goodness or the art of sanctity. I wanted Tony to think of the audience as one thousand selves, or an audience of Richard fans, near clones needing only that particular soliloquy to be perfect clones: not talking to himself but to a mass of near-selves close to the perfect him. But it withers to horrifying loneliness with “I am I” and “When I die no man will pity me.” Charisma is nothing without love.
Beale: Less so than the question implies. He wasn’t a very good playactor in the religious scene in my version. I think he can don a persona, as he does with Anne, but I don’t think the Richard that I played was particularly conscious of playacting. He just adapted himself to the situation that he was in and the objective that he needed to achieve. I think he believes things from the moment he has said them. I don’t remember playacting being particularly important. He liked his relationship with the audience. He liked being able to achieve something in public view, which I suppose is playacting in a way. He liked the audience to see how the cogs were moving.
The initial setup of the wooing of Lady Anne seems unpromising: Richard has stabbed her first husband (Edward Prince of Wales) to death in Henry VI Part 3 and now he’s courting her over the corpse of her father-in-law (Henry VI), whom he’s also killed. And yet he wins her over. Did your rehearsal process reveal the secret of his success?
Alexander: He makes her believe he loves her and, despite everything, she’s moved by that. He makes her believe he’s a good man and misunderstood. Besides, these are dangerous times and she needs a powerful protector.
Beale: No! I don’t think I ever cracked that one. I know Annabelle Apsion, who played Lady Anne, felt uncomfortable a lot of the time, both when I played it and when Ciaran Hinds took over from me after I slipped a disc in my back. I don’t know what the secret of it is. It was always the scene that was the most difficult for me. It doesn’t play to my particular strengths. If I were a sexier actor perhaps it would, but I couldn’t really use that part of the man’s armory in my dealings with her. I also think there is some mystery there, that I’m sure a lot of Richards have unlocked, but that I found very hard indeed. I was in Milton Keynes [a commuter town in the English Midlands] and somebody suggested playing it extremely slowly, against all the technical rules, which perhaps we should have tried. But I can’t pretend I ever got that one.
The women eventually play a big part in bringing Richard down: there’s a definite shift in the power structure when his
6. Jonathan Slinger as Richard in Michael Boyd’s production.
Richard loves playacting, doesn’t he? As in the scene with the prayer-book. Presumably that dramatic self-consciousness is one of the keys to his charisma in the theater?
Alexander: Richard loves acting because he has fully absorbed the idea that one may smile and smile and be a villain. It seems amusing and hilarious to him how easy it is to dupe people, to experience up close their vanity leading directly to their gullibility. This dramatic self-consciousness makes him charismatic to audiences because he realizes they are more entertained by audacious, immoral, and downright wicked behavior than they would be by someone spouting pieties and lecturing them on goodness or the art of sanctity. I wanted Tony to think of the audience as one thousand selves, or an audience of Richard fans, near clones needing only that particular soliloquy to be perfect clones: not talking to himself but to a mass of near-selves close to the perfect him. But it withers to horrifying loneliness with “I am I” and “When I die no man will pity me.” Charisma is nothing without love.
Beale: Less so than the question implies. He wasn’t a very good playactor in the religious scene in my version. I think he can don a persona, as he does with Anne, but I don’t think the Richard that I played was particularly conscious of playacting. He just adapted himself to the situation that he was in and the objective that he needed to achieve. I think he believes things from the moment he has said them. I don’t remember playacting being particularly important. He liked his relationship with the audience. He liked being able to achieve something in public view, which I suppose is playacting in a way. He liked the audience to see how the cogs were moving.
The initial setup of the wooing of Lady Anne seems unpromising: Richard has stabbed her first husband (Edward Prince of Wales) to death in Henry VI Part 3 and now he’s courting her over the corpse of her father-in-law (Henry VI), whom he’s also killed. And yet he wins her over. Did your rehearsal process reveal the secret of his success?
Alexander: He makes her believe he loves her and, despite everything, she’s moved by that. He makes her believe he’s a good man and misunderstood. Besides, these are dangerous times and she needs a powerful protector.
Beale: No! I don’t think I ever cracked that one. I know Annabelle Apsion, who played Lady Anne, felt uncomfortable a lot of the time, both when I played it and when Ciaran Hinds took over from me after I slipped a disc in my back. I don’t know what the secret of it is. It was always the scene that was the most difficult for me. It doesn’t play to my particular strengths. If I were a sexier actor perhaps it would, but I couldn’t really use that part of the man’s armory in my dealings with her. I also think there is some mystery there, that I’m sure a lot of Richards have unlocked, but that I found very hard indeed. I was in Milton Keynes [a commuter town in the English Midlands] and somebody suggested playing it extremely slowly, against all the technical rules, which perhaps we should have tried. But I can’t pretend I ever got that one.
The women eventually play a big part in bringing Richard down: there’s a definite shift in the power structure when his
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