This Much Is True

It started promisingly. When my agent told me about the job, I leapt at it. This was a rarely performed classic from one of the greats of Jacobean drama; there was a staggering cast and we would be playing at the Old Vic. The Old Vic is a theatre steeped in theatrical history, especially for classical productions. It housed the National Theatre for twelve years until the concrete structure on the South Bank had been built. Our production was the first to take over the Old Vic after its departure.

The White Devil (or, to give it its full original title), The White Divel; or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano. With The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan, is a difficult and strange revenge tragedy, which was first published and performed in 1612. I knew the play from Cambridge but had completely forgotten it. Webster’s best known work is The Duchess of Malfi; but both plays are violent and complicated. With actors like Glenda Jackson, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Shepherd, Madge Ryan, James Villiers, Patrick Magee and Frances de la Tour, I was joining a cast to die for, and so in the beginning I was thrilled.

I was playing Zanche the Moor (later I would come to call her ‘Zanche the Less’), servant to Glenda Jackson’s Vittoria Corombona. I steal money from Vittoria and betray her brother Flamineo to my new lover and things go downhill from there. I was the black devil to her white. I regret to admit that I was ‘blacked up’ for this role, the second time I’d done so; ten years previously, I was Mammy Pleasant in The Cat and the Canary at Leicester Rep.^[13]

Mammy Pleasant’s accent wasn’t in my repertoire and rather than listen to a tape (the usual actor’s route), I decided to accost a West Indian lady in Leicester market. I went up to a friendly-looking woman at a vegetable stall and said ‘Excuse me.’ She looked up, ‘Yes?’

‘I’m an actress and I’m playing a West Indian part in the next play at the Mercury Theatre. Would you be kind enough to give me some lessons in your accent?’

She raised her eyebrows, ‘What accent?’

That was tricky. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I want to sound Jamaican. Are you Jamaican?’

‘Yes, I am Jamaican.’

‘Would you let me bring the text to your house? It would just be an hour or so. I’ll pay you.’

‘Pay me for TALKING?! No. Just come.’ And I spent a couple of hours with her, learning to sound like a voodoo queen. The line that still rings through my head is: ‘I see spirits all around you.’

Back to The White Devil. The director was Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the illegitimate son of Orson Welles. Michael is a charming man, and now we are friends on Facebook after all these years, but Michael thought that it was enough to get a fabulous cast together: he didn’t have a vision for the play. He’d come from television, directing Ready Steady Go! where improvisation was key. Perhaps he thought that when these actors stepped onto the stage, the performance would generate itself. He is definitely a non-interventionist director. Well, it’s not like that in theatre. You can’t just throw people onto a stage and expect them to make it work. Sure enough, it proved a catastrophe of unparalleled horror from slow start to ignominious finish.

I’ve talked to other cast members about our experience. Not all hated it as I did. Tom Chadbon had a wonderful time; and it’s important for me to say so, because my own misery obscured my vision of the wider truth. Adam Godley, aged eleven, played Giovanni, the child prince. He shared the role with Jonathan Scott-Taylor (following Equity rules about child performers). It was his first job and he stole the notices. He remembers Patrick Magee giving him racing tips and treating him like a grown-up. He loved talking to the old stage doorkeeper and once missed an entrance because of it. Glenda fixed him with a steely glare: ‘Don’t worry, but don’t EVER do it again!’ He never did, and went on to become a distinguished actor, to be seen again on Broadway in The Lehman Trilogy.