Last week’s announcement that Antony Sher has a terminal illness hit me hard, like a punch to the stomach. Why this piece of black news, coming as it does amidst so much disease and death in this Covid-era, should have felt so very upsetting, is harder to know. Or maybe not. Because maybe it’s less a matter of knowing and more a matter of feeling.
I’ve never met Antony Sher, not really, not in the sense of having a conversation. He penned a small contribution to my first book, I once had a quick half-introduction across a pub table (at which I wasn’t sitting), and have been in the same room as him at press conferences a fair few times.
But I’ve long felt his presence in my life. As a theatre-obsessed kid, I would pore over his published journal Year Of The King before I ever saw him act (not counting his hotel porter in Superman II). Back in 1984, I was nine and Sher was literally the poster-boy for British theatre - images of his dynamic, crutch-wielding Richard III were everywhere. His Royal Shakespeare Company performance won him an Olivier Award, sure, but more; it had seemingly adrenalised the entire theatrical establishment. Growing up in Bournemouth, dreaming of Shaftesbury Avenue, I thrilled to reports of this sensational, era-defining turn. Through Year Of The King, which charted the journey of that production, I was also introduced to Sher’s back-story - how he came to the UK as a South African Jew, seeking out his famous playwright-cousin Ronald Harwood, and his early theatrical adventures.
Three years later I was taken to Stratford to finally see him on stage, as Shylock. I wasn’t disappointed - that great performance stays with me. As does his savage-funny Tamberlaine, his unhinged Leontes, his - so many more. All the way up to the last time I saw him on stage, as a Falstaff whose humanity overspilled his guile. Sher can connect psychotic characters to an artery of intellectualism, just as he encircles spiritually noble ones with a dangerous, bristling zaniness. He has always been an original and that’s why he has blazed so brightly. It’s what we think of when we read accounts of iconic classical actors of the past - Kean, Irving, Garrick. Each was an original. What they could do, what they could bring to a classic text, was entirely specific to themselves, and had never been seen before.
