The rule is usually that one dissenting vote negates the acceptance of a wage cut. The ‘secret’ information was given to the management; only two people voted against— myself and Frances de la Tour. James Villiers didn’t like the situation and said so, but needed the money and so he signed. He made a point of apologising to Frankie. I’m sure everyone signed for similar reasons: we all had rent to pay and bills to meet.
Frankie and I were sacked.
It should never have been known that we had voted a certain way. Equity should not have let that happen. I’m a passionate trade unionist; I was on the Equity council for many years, but at that moment, my union let us down badly, and I will never forget it. Frankie and I collected our things and walked out, and everybody said their awkward goodbyes.
The show limped along for another six weeks and then closed. My dresser, James Villiers’s wife, Patricia Donovan, played my part; Fidelis Morgan played Frankie’s part. I’d had a rumbunctious affair with Fidelis which had started in the dressing room, when she sat on my knee to do my make-up. I’m afraid we now seldom speak to each other.
Getting into Character: Endgame
The best moment for an actor is the phone call that tells you you’ve got the job. For me, the second-best is the first read-through, when you get to meet everybody. We all gather round a table in a big room with the director, and in chairs behind us are the technical crew: costume, hair, make-up and so on. I like to make an impact on these occasions. So, when they go around the table and everybody says who they are, I say, ‘Miriam Margolyes, eighty-year-old Jewish lesbian.’ That usually raises a smile. I’m sure some people think, ‘Gosh, she’s brave!’ And the people who have heard it before groan, ‘Oh, God!’ But I think everyone is nervous and a laugh helps to dissipate the fears.
At that first gathering, you have to draw a careful line between delivering a performance — because you haven’t found your performance yet, so you shouldn’t be delivering — and giving an indication of what your performance might be. I relish those occasions and, once we start, I’m not nervous at all because I don’t have to worry about losing my lines: I’ve got the text in front of me. I also know that I’ve been cast for a reason and, in the first read-through, the challenge is to show that reason and to be alive to what the cast is offering — it’s a joint voyage of discovery.
The director’s role is vital but there are surprisingly few good directors. It is both their vision of the play and their ability to unlock an actor’s talent to achieve their full potential that marks a great director. In 1978, Max Stafford-Clark directed Julie Covington in Caryl Churchill’s great play, Cloud 9. Julie was having great difficulty with a long and crucial speech in the second act. She spent hours on it, and knew it wasn’t right. And then Max said, ‘Just sing it, Julie. Don’t speak it. Sing it.’ He knew that she was a singer, the original Evita. And it worked. She sang the whole speech and forever after that the speech flew and was illuminating and a high point of the play. I detest the man but I acknowledge his brilliance. The show was a great success, one of the Royal Court’s triumphs.
Why do I detest Max? In 1978, I too was in Cloud 9 at the Royal Court. The Joint Stock company, which Max had co-founded, had a particular rehearsal technique. The writer would sit in, while various improvisations were performed. The play was about sexual politics (among other things) and the cast was selected for their sexuality as well as their talent. I was the lesbian in the company, Tony Sher and Jim Hooper were the gay men and everyone else was straight. Max decreed that we should have a ‘truth’ session: one by one, members of the company would sit in the middle of the circle and answer questions posed by the other company members; the questions were deeply personal, often sexual, often unsettling. Max would sit in, taking notes. He insisted these sessions must be totally confidential. Heather came to answer questions, and so did Julie Covington’s mother.
In 2007, Max published a book, Taking Stock, a detailed account of the plays he’d directed. In the chapter on Cloud 9 he used the notes he’d made at the time, quoting great chunks from the supposedly ‘confidential’ sessions he’d attended. He concentrated on my remarks which were, as usual, totally uncensored and revealing. He sent me the proofs, but only after I wrote him a letter of sympathy following his severe stroke. I phoned the publisher, Nick Hern, and demanded these passages be removed. It shocked me then — as it does now — that Max felt entitled to use deeply personal information obtained in a professional context to sell his book, choosing to ignore completely the code of confidentiality he had himself established. He is a fine director, but his personal morals stink.
In 2009 I was cast in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame directed by Simon McBurney (of Théâtre de Complicité) at the Duchess Theatre in London. It’s a one-act play with just four characters, and I was the only woman. Mark Rylance was Hamm; I was playing Nell, Hamm’s mother; and Tom Hickey, an Irish actor, was playing Nagg, husband of Nell and father of Hamm. Richard Briers was going to play Clov, Hamm’s servant. I don’t know why, but Richard dropped out after the first rehearsal and Simon McBurney took over the role.
Our first meeting for the read-through was enormously cordial, but I felt uneasy. Mark Rylance is one of the greatest actors in the world. He’s not ‘grand’; he is approachable, loves a laugh, listens attentively and is generous with praise. I was nervous of working with him, I knew he would spot my ignorance and ineptitude. But he made me feel at ease because he shared his own anxiety. And when you feel that you’re fellow-travellers, the panic subsides and the creation can begin. Simon too, has that gift of instant democracy. It is a blessing.
The problem was that I had always thought Beckett was a waste of time and I didn’t have a clue what he was on about. For a start, for most of this play I would be wedged in a dustbin. I really wanted to work with Simon and Mark, however, so when I was offered the role of Nell, I accepted like a shot — and then I panicked. I didn’t have a clue about how to play this part. I sat there at the read-through in dread. In the end, I just came out with it: I told Simon that I felt completely at sea — I couldn’t understand where we were; how and why were we in dustbins? (I still haven’t fathomed that one, admittedly.) I said that he was going to have to tell me how to play my role, and, luckily for me, he did. I was also a bit nervous about the Irishness of my character. I’m good at accents, but a bad Irish accent is an embarrassment. So, rather than launch into full ‘Oirish’, I decided that I would simply have a suggestion of Irishness. It was carefully done, measured out, so it was perfectly obvious that I wasn’t Irish, but at least nobody had occasion to accuse me of a bogus brogue.
It was unlike any other rehearsal process I’ve ever experienced. For the first week or more, we didn’t attend to the text at alclass="underline" we just played physical games. I had been brought up in a different way — you start and finish with The Text; but Simon had us playing football, and catch. In fact, I had seldom been so physical out of bed, and I was the one who barely moved: I kept saying I’d go in goal.
We also spent a lot of time improvising and playing status games, where Mark, Tom and I would take turns coming into the room, and we had to show our status: who’s up and who’s down, who’s the boss and who’s the poor underling. If it’s used skilfully, that kind of exercise can be enlightening and, happily, on this occasion, with Simon’s direction, it was. It can also, however, be a total waste of time. For example, if a director says, ‘Be an ostrich’, or ‘Be more brown,’ (that was actually said to me) I know it’s not going to work. I belong to a more conventional school of acting; I’m with Sir Noël Coward, who said, ‘Learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.’