(No details I’m afraid of where or when this article originated - although date would
be late 1976)
One man’s week
Michael Pennington has been playing Mercutio (Romeo and Juliet), Hector (Troilus
and Cressida), Edgar (King Lear) and Major Rolfe (Destiny) in the Royal Shakespeare
theatre’s Stratford-upon-Avon season which ends on Saturday. A volume of his songs
appeared in 1972, and his account of a journey through Siberia is in preparation.
(Rossya)
Saturday
‘King Lear’ is the last word on everything, and an afternoon spent amidst its extremities
is quite enough for one day. But this is Stratford; and compound logistics require
of me tonight a fluent transition to the barracks and high-rise offices of ‘Destiny’
at The Other Place, a few hundred yards up the road.
As a boy I remember a theatrical knight describing a day in the typical actor’s life
as 10 hours in a film studio, then a hire car to the West End to play – ‘King Lear’.
I wouldn’t mind, I thought then, becoming “typical.” Well, perhaps this is it, in
the style of the Seventies: stumping through the Waterside gardens with a carrier
bag, adjusting double fast with hardly a cup of tea between. Not complaining mind;
just being typical.
Sunday
London. Salaam. Things feel so good in Stratford that the call of the capital seems
stern. The Earl of Kent stays behind in Chipping Campden, but the more metropolitan-minded
hit the A40 in column by midnight on a Saturday. The road is dangerously familiar
by now and Woodstock goes by in a dream.
The day of rest spent making shelves and learning ‘How Yukong Moved the Mountains.’
Workers whose parents could probably not read discuss ideological a priorism in a
Shanghai generator factory. So? Much of my unoccupied time these days is spent sifting
for the purposes of publication through the perplexities brought on by a visit to
the soviet Union; and the impassiveness of the urban Soviet worker seems currently
to add up to as much or as little as the comprehensive cheeriness of the Chinese
– a proletariat whose propaganda springs unforced from the heart.
Monday
Finally agree contract for RSC’s Newcastle season in March. A number of actors are
still declining to renew their contracts unless offered ‘Titus Andronicus’ next season,
but mostly stayed together for what may turn out to be a positive pleasure. A wealth
of extra-curricular projects being aired, to fill in the acres of spare time we shall
have between putting on eight shows in four weeks. I offer a Thomas Hardy programme
and a new version of Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman.’ I must be crazy.
The theatre dark on Mondays now, as a concession to the fastnesses of winter; though
the popular plays are still doing such good business it’s probably not necessary.
This gives me a full, though displaced weekend. Evening therefore spent doing anything
but getting started on the Gogol – and restraining a literary agent from commissioning
a new translation.
Tuesday
Working elevenses at Moo Movies, design home of the new book, and the best cheesecake
in town. Then, fortified, back to Stratford for the last performance of ‘Troilus
and Cressida’ preparing for Hector used to take me two hours; now, by some extension
of Parkinson’ Law, the same make-up takes an hour and three quarters.
Stratford’s welcome is sparsely warm: bright frost on the trees, the Avon swollen
and fast. Fairy lights on the horse chestnuts in front of the theatre. The streets
still thickish with visitors, though mostly from Birmingham and Bristol – I’ve not
had to discuss the Queen Mab speech in Finnish for some time now. I miss it; public
feedback here is instantaneous and unforced in a way it rarely is in London.
Returning home after the show, fetched myself a crippling blow on ye olde low wooden
beam in my cottage. Mercy, will I never learn?
Wednesday
A full day on the trans-Siberian. Have pulled the manuscript back from the brink
after re-reading it and not liking it quite enough. Time presses. The new corrections
will have to be in green – the top copy begins to look like a travelling lease. Roger
Rees’s marvellous drawings of the journey cover the walls; hard to believe he’s never
been near Siberia and they all came out of an evening’s talk and a bottle of Tequila.
The self-inflicted setback is a small one, and, by evening, am confident again of
having done some justice to an unforgettable journey.
No show for me tonight, and the adrift imagination has planned supper for six on
a scale altogether inconsistent with available resources. Good though, and many matters
discussed quite unsuitable for publication in ‘One Man’s Week.’
Thursday
‘Destiny’ tonight, and a group of black schoolchildren in for a play about racial
politics. Quietly received.
Almost season’s end; time to pack up and emerged stunned into the bright light of
a month’s holiday. I reflect on a nearly completed journey, a terrific year. Strangers
last January, we now have quite a lot in common. Unpredictable nights, overwork,
and finally more leisure; £70 telephone bills, failed vegetable plots, and the end-of-term
party. There were periods when the permanent set – part-timbered barn, part bullring
– seemed the natural hub and one sure home. Springtime, the swans, rare autumn colours;
Mercutio in a heatwave, Poor Tom naked in mid-winter. And of course the standard
green crockery and those brainshaking wooden beams. It’s what living in Stratford
is all about.
To bed, and hit my head again.
Return to Romeo and Juliet