A week after Stephen Sondheim died the theatre is mourning a second Jewish giant of the stage.
It is impossible to think of Sir Antony Sher without conjuring up his Richard III. As Shakespeare's most murderous would-be king he unforgettably embodied the image of the crippled Richard as a “bottled spider” and “bunch-backed toad”.
The crutches that supported him were not only extensions of his arms, they served as flaying mandibles that searched for their next victim. They also allowed his human arachnid to scuttle across the stage with alarming speed, turning disability into a superpower and the production by Bill Alexander (who would later direct Sher’s Shylock in A Merchant of Venice) into theatre history. Sher’s Richard III even eclipsed Laurence Olivier’s.
That performance would cement his reputation as one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his or any other generation. It also completely justified the Royal Shakespeare’s Company's decision to invite him back to Stratford (having previously rejected him) in the wake of the actor’s breakthrough job in the title role of the BBC series The History Man (1981) in which Sher played philandering university lecturer Howard Kirk.
It also justified his decision to travel from South Africa at the age of 19 in 1968 (with his mother and father) to audition at the Central School of Speech and Drama even though it too unceremoniously rejected him. So did RADA which added insult to the decision by strongly advising Sher to give up the idea of becoming an actor.
After making his name in such alpha male roles as Richard and Howard the actor’s range was established when he appeared as the Jewish drag queen Arnold Beckoff in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy, a role for which Howard’s manly moustache and Richard’s weaponised crutches were swapped for four inch heels, a bright red wig and eyelashes that could have been snatched from Liza Minelli.
Being gay (Sher was married to RSC artistic director Gregory Doran) and Jewish he understood how it felt to be marginalised and so there was a lot of his own experience he could draw on for his award-winning performance as Arnold.
"All the aspects of my identity were problems for me initially," he told me when he was rehearsing for his first Arthur Miller play Broken Glass in which he played the self-hating Jew Gellburg.
"I didn't immediately come out as gay,” he said. “The Jewish thing was an issue because once I'd set my sights on the RSC and classical acting, I couldn't see any examples of great Jewish actors, so I thought I'd better not be Jewish. And I had a big problem with admitting to being a white South African at the height of apartheid. I now look back at the time I spent trying to deny those aspects of myself as an incredible waste of time and energy."
However, Sher’s talent was not restricted to acting. His book about playing Richard (The Year Of The King) became essential reading for theatregoers and it was illustrated with his own drawings which is how many people became aware of Sher’s talent as an artist.
There were also novels and plays including ID which drew on the apartheid South Africa of Sher’s upbringing and Primo based on Levi’s book If This Is A Man, a testimonial work for which Sher stood alone on stage as the Holocaust survivor.
No obituary or appreciation of Sher’s career is complete without highlighting his Richard. But perhaps less well appreciated is his physical bravery as a performer. Before the Richard III role he was the Fool opposite Michael Gambon’s Lear, a production during which Sher ruptured his achilles tendon. Despite a dread of falling over he took on the risk of crutches which he said were inspired during his rehabilitation and physiotherapy sessions.
That physical commitment was seen again in The Winters Tale where as Leontes he was felled by his own state of mind. But Sher didn’t collapse to his knees, rather he hit the floor hard and rigid, lifting his head just in time to avoid cracking his skull but otherwise suppressing the body’s instinct to break its fall. The audience gasped. And then there was his Tamburlaine in which Sher leaped from a drawbridge, somersaulted then rose from under a man's guard and sliced him with two scimitars. He climbed a rope, made a speech while hanging upside down, then slid to the ground before killing a king without losing breath or rhythm.
I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting him a few times, first at the Almeida and then the National when he was rehearsing his own plays ID and Primo. He had more time, was more generous and more open than any of his peers I can think of. But the time that will stay with me most vividly was when I sat with him in his changing room at the Barbican as he prepared to go on stage as Falstaff.
Most of the old rogue’s beard was Sher’s own but the stomach and fat suit had to be strapped on. I was there to talk to Sher about Tom Stoppard whose play The Hard Problem was about to open at the National. Sher had played the misremembering British official Henry Carr in an RSC revival of TravestiesAs he morphed into Falstaff, casually chatting about how it was simply his job to ensure audiences understood a play, it was like being in the presence of two stage giants.
The last time we spoke was during lockdown. He was at his and Doran’s home just outside Stratford. Sher may well have already had the cancer that overcame him so quickly. We were talking on Zoom and behind him hung a South African flag with a picture of him and the great South African actor John Kani printed on it. It was a present from the opening night of Kani’s own play Kunene and the King in which the South African actors – one black the other white - tackled head on the legacy of apartheid.
I asked Tony how his lockdown had been. The RSC was still closed because of the pandemic but during trips to Waitrose he at least got to see the building at regular intervals.
“It’s where I spent most of my career,’ he said. “There's is just so much life in there and so many memories in that building. I love going into it.” And then he added, “I miss the theatre so much.”
And now the reverse of that final statement is true.
