The Stage

Richard III at the Barbican, London (1985)

When I was about 12 or 13, I saw Antony Sher’s Richard III by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican in London. My mum took me, and I think it was the first professional Shakespeare I’d seen. I’m sure I didn’t understand a lot of it – it’s pretty hard to follow even when you know it well.

It was 1985, and the Barbican itself was this strange, relatively new concrete castle, and at the heart of it was this play with a design by William Dudley, which I remember as a vaulted, cathedral-like medieval space. But what
I remember most was Tony’s performance – and how it transcended language.

The production, being in some ways traditional, really highlighted how ‘other’ he was. Tony was gay, South African, diminutive and not obviously a leading man, yet was playing a lead at the RSC. Dressed in black on these two spider-like silver crutches, he seemed to carry so much in his essence that seemed ‘othered’, all of which came together with the role.

Looking at the photos now, it seems a bit old-fashioned, but they don’t show his movement. He had this Kafka-like quality that was just electrifying. And he did this very clever thing: the fabric of his almost jester-like costume draped down from his elbows so that, as he leaned forward with his hunched back, the fabric created two extra legs. With his own legs and the crutches, he looked like this weird, six-legged creature. Productions are made up of a million creative decisions in every beat, but if one gesture is powerful enough, it can bind and unify a whole production – that’s what I sense I learned from Bill Alexander’s production, and particularly Tony’s performance.

Long afterwards, I came to [Sher’s] book, Year of the King. It’s still one of the great books about acting, but also about how a production is made. It became a big part of my love for that production. In 2007, Tony’s partner, Greg Doran, organised a Shakespeare gala at the RSC on the last night before the builders came to pull the theatre down and build the new one. Tony came out, pulling those crutches behind him, and he did the “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech. I was absolutely transported back.

Analysis – David Benedict

Antony Sher joined the RSC and had seized attention playing the Fool to Michael Gambon’s Lear.

But his Richard III – drawing on Margaret’s description of the character as a “bottled spider”, happening at a time before theatre had begun to address the onstage representation of disability – catapulted him to critical and audience attention.

The 1984 production, one of the company’s most celebrated, was the RSC main stage debut of director Bill Alexander, who assembled a strong supporting cast, including Roger Allam as Clarence, Penny Downie as Anne and Patricia Routledge as Margaret. But, as fits the play, everything was dominated by Sher’s ferociously energetic, wildly manipulative Richard. He used his crutches not only to hurtle around the stage with ease but as cunning, vicious tools with which to demean and frighten his opponents. The performance, repeated in 1985 at the Barbican, won him the Olivier for best actor.