Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook - Twentieth Anniversary Edition by Antony Sher Page A

Adrian is. The Peter Barnes play is postponed to the Barbican '85 season.
They're bending the rules slightly for the new season at The Other Place (which was to be exclusively brand new plays) and now in Slot Four is a
revival of Trevor Griffiths's The Party which Howard is directing with
David Edgar. I know the play only by reputation. He wants me to play the
part originally played by Ronald Pickup. The Olivier part is being offered
to McDiarmid, the Frank Finlay part to Mal. I promise to try and find a
copy in Cape Town, but it might be banned either by the South Africans
or Trevor Griffiths himself. Ask him about the rest of the season's casting.
Rees and Branagh are definite, McDiarmid eighty-five per cent but should
be one hundred per cent after The Party offer. `We regard you as sixty-five
per cent,' says Howard.

    We watch an old home movie from 1957. It's been transposed on to video
so the quality is appalling, but it's still quite compulsive viewing. If you
had to recreate what memory looks like it could be this. The amateur
cameraman can never settle on anything properly so you have these
restless, tantalising glimpses of people and places and days from long ago.
You ache for close-ups to be held longer but they never are. Sequences
flit by in bleached colours and hazy outlines confirming the popular belief
that the past was one long summer's day. Surprising how exhibitionist I
am at the age of eight: a smiling little boy always in the foreground trying
to hop into shot. At one time I appear in hat and moustache apparently
doing a Charlie Chaplin impersonation. Where is the shy, frightened
recluse Monty and I have spent so long digging out?
    `That came later,' says Mum firmly.
    Next to her on the sofa Dad sleeps soundly. For as long as I can
remember, as soon as any form of entertainment commences - play, film,
television or even a home movie - he falls instantly into a deep and
contented slumber. Dad lives for his business, lives in a practical commercial world. Perhaps the world of the imagination really has no appeal
whatsoever. When he finds himself in the kind of place where lights will
dim in one area so that a fantasy world can begin to glow in another, he
chooses the darkness.
    Now his head jerks up briefly with a sharp snort from the throat,
startling us all except Mum who has learned to ignore these abrupt
comings and goings of her husband. On the screen in our home movies,
a child looms into close-up with large ears and hair carefully brushed for
some ancient birthday party.
    `Which one?' he asks, only fractionally awake.
    Joel,' Mum says briskly, without altering her concentration.

    Juhhh . . .' we hear, as his head falls forward again.
    He's always had some difficulty recognising one son from another.
Often when he addresses me, he starts with a little roll-call: `Randall ...
tsk! Joel ... tsk! Antony!'
    The highlight of the film is a sequence where Mum and Dad are
dressed as Twenties flappers for a fancy-dress party. Bathed in this film's
eternal sunshine, they dance the Charleston in the back yard of the old
house in Marais Road. He has on an enormous false Groucho moustache
which, with his own big nose and heavy glasses, makes it look like he's
wearing one of those joke-shop faces. We all cry with laughter while he
sleeps on soundly.
Thursday 22 December
    Find a copy of The Party. Difficult to read - so was Maydays - but that
same sense of potential theatrical vibrancy once you've understood the
arguments. But I am worried by Shawcross, the part on offer; Iioward
said that he's the one through whose eyes the audience see the action,
but all this means is that he's the straight man to the fun parts, Tagg and
especially Sloman, a wonderful part.
    Adrian rings. Puffing deeply on a cigarette between phrases, he reads
me the synopsis of Nicky's play set in Cairo in the Second World War.
It's based on a true story and sounds fascinating, although the character