Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Harmonia (A) on March 27, 2008 at 19:34:59

From a tribute in The Guardian/UK

Simon Callow on working with Paul Scofield:

"He made love to the audience"

'Paul Scofield was the last of the theatrical titans, a late flowering of that astonishing generation that included Olivier, Gielgud, Ashcroft, Evans, Redgrave and Richardson, and his death last week leaves the stage immeasurably impoverished. No one who saw him treading the boards will ever forget it. He was such an uncommon physical phenomenon: tall and powerful, a fine figure of a man, but complex, even physically so. Every inch of him seemed to be expressing contradictory things. His face was sensationally handsome, but there were contradictions there, too: the soft sensuousness of his mouth denied by the sharp precision of his nose, his eyes often veiled, his brow imperious, his eyebrows endlessly mobile. His skin was astonishingly smooth and soft.
Perhaps the most extraordinary of his physical gifts, though, was his voice: an instrument like none other, an organ with limitless stops, from the mightiest of bass rumbles to falsetto pipings. He seemed to be able to sound several notes at once, creating chords that resonated remarkably, stirring strange emotions, but always for expressive purpose, never for mere virtuosity. Given this exotic physical endowment, it is surprising that he was able to transform himself so completely; his Uncle Vanya and his King Lear, within a few years of each other, scarcely seemed to come from the same planet. Whatever he did had a profound charge of interiority. With him, the inner workings of the character were made flesh. In the early 1970s, I was an usher at the Old Vic and saw his gloriously shabby, bedraggled Wilhelm Voigt, in Carl Zuckmayer's The Captain of Köpenick, night after night. I found myself deeply nourished. It was like gazing at a great painting and finding more and more in it: endless detail, sudden vistas, marvels of technique producing immense emotion.

I approached the prospect of acting with him with a kind of bliss mingled with dread. The play was Peter Shaffer's Amadeus; he was playing the machinating Salieri, I was Mozart. I was 30, in the grip of almost uncontrollable energy that I scarcely knew what to do with, on stage or off. He was 57, two years younger than I am today, but giving a good impression of the Ancient of Days, with his magnificent silver head of hair and noble mien. The only bohemian element - the only clue that he might be an actor rather than a king, say, or a Nobel prize-winner - was his penchant for pastel-coloured shirts. In person, he was sweet, courteous, without any side whatever. He laughed easily, but it was evident that he was very shy, socially. He wore country clothes and smoked his pipe whenever he could.

Once the formalities were over, we swiftly got on with rehearsing. He said very little, and was evidently wrestling with a long part that was being constantly rewritten. I, on the other hand, seemed to be exhibiting signs of Tourette's syndrome, busily offering suggestions on every subject, including his performance. Scofield eyed me warily from behind his high-backed chair. In other words, our relationship was pretty well that of the characters in the play, with the difference that I was playing a genius, while he actually was one.

His approach was to sketch the performance in quite lightly, and then suddenly plunge in deeper, sending the character for a swim in his own secret streams, the hidden pools of emotion and fantasy deep within. I was desperately nervous and over-compensated by being too emphatic, shrieking and giggling all over his lines. He bore it with great patience.

What he could not endure was the constant rewriting. One day, Peter Hall (who was directing), Shaffer, Scofield and I gathered round the piano, while the other actors sat chatting and having tea, well out of earshot. Hall said: "Paul, Peter has a small rewrite which - " He never finished the sentence. In a voice that was barely audible but of unimaginable intensity, Scofield said: "I'm not. Learning. Another. Line." Suddenly, the whole room fell silent. Hall immediately said he was sure it wasn't really necessary, Shaffer started gibbering and I offered to say all the new lines myself. End of discussion. The veil of courtesy had been pulled away for a minute - and one saw the massive power that lay behind the affable exterior, the power that underpinned every performance he gave. On another occasion, I was (as usual) solving the play's problems as I saw it, and said: "It just needs a line here." Paul roared: "Not from me baby!" And then he turned to me and added: "You monster!"

When we left the rehearsal room and got into the theatre, I felt him stretching and prowling like a panther in the jungle, sniffing the space out. He appeared to be expanding, getting taller. When the audience arrived for the first preview, he seemed like a giant. I was shocked by the intensity of the public's response to him. They ached for him, they wanted to consume him entirely, every delicious morsel. I had no experience of this sort of thing and foolishly tried to tug him back into the relationship we had had in the rehearsal room. He would not tolerate it. He and the audience were making love and woe betide anyone who came between them. When I finally got the hang of it and attempted a little gentle love-making with them myself, he changed completely. He was more than happy to encourage a menage a trois.

We got on wonderfully well without ever really spending any time together. Our relationship was unspoken - until one night on the stairs, when he suddenly told me that he would never play Salieri with anyone but me. I swore the same to him. We remained faithful to our vows. I would see him from time to time: we wrote to each other, we did the play on the radio. He had no small talk, but then he had no big talk either. He did not live the usual semi-public life of an actor. When he wasn't acting, he retreated to the home where he lived in perfect domestic equilibrium with his beloved wife, Joy. He didn't much like to leave the country, except to go to the Isle of Mull, where, as everywhere else, he read and thought and nurtured his inner life. After a triumphant John Gabriel Borkman at the National in 1996, he seemed to have quietly retired.

And then, about eight years ago, I asked him to take part in a gala I was directing at the Palace Theatre. He duly stepped forward at the end of the evening, slightly frail, a little smaller than he had been, but still in majestic command of his great vocal instrument and his adoring audience. It was Prospero's farewell, and he effortlessly filled that large auditorium with his unique music: "As you from crimes would pardoned be,/ Let your indulgence set me free."

Now that great voice is silent. It is hard to imagine another such voice being heard in our lifetime.'

Snagged from: The Guardian

• Simon Callow on Paul Scofield   (Open in New Window)