I have to have that word!” says Richard Griffiths in quiet triumph. The word
in question is “relationships”, and it’s one that’s gone missing from the
typed script that Griffiths, his Harry Potter co-star Daniel
Radcliffe and the rest of the cast of Equus are working from. But
it’s present in the knackered old Longman’s Study Text copy of the play that
I’d studied for A level.
I’ve brought the script to show Griffiths his character’s defining line, or at
least the one my younger self had helpfully double-underlined in black ink.
It’s a line in which his psychiatrist character talks about envying the
distorted passion of his patient Alan (Radcliffe), a teenager who has
recently blinded six horses. In fact, Griffiths’s concern is less literary,
more practical: the missing word finally pumps sense into the line he’d
previously known as “Many men have less vital with their wives”.
Even the playwright, Peter Shaffer, had refused to concede that there was a
noun missing. “What I think is,” Griffiths says, his musical Yorkshire tones
stirring up quiet conspiracy, “Peter wrote it 40 years ago. Demosthenes says
the stream you step into is different from the stream you step out of,
because of the flow that happens in the intervening time. And I suspect that
when someone writes a play when he’s 40 and then you ask him about it when
he’s 80, you’re talking to a different guy.”
Griffiths himself has been a lot of different guys since his professional
debut in another Shaffer play, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, in
Harrogate in 1970. He’s been a twinkling presence in some capacity in
seemingly every British TV drama series since, not to mention films and
stage turns — most recently as the free-minded teacher Hector in Alan
Bennett’s The History Boys.
He’s always played older than his years. He was barely into his thirties when
he was the fiftysomething husband of Elaine Stritch in the sitcom Nobody’s
Perfect. When he played his signature film role as the predatory gay
aesthete Uncle Monty in Withnail and I , he was only a decade older
than his co-stars, Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant. “Because of being large
and lumpy I’ve always done character things,” he says. “I’d be perfect now
for Uncle Monty, I’m about the right age.”
But in Griffiths’s 60th year he is taking an entirely uncomical role.
Shrink-in-crisis Martin Dysart was first played in the West End by Alec
McCowen in 1973, and then on Broadway and on film by Richard Burton. This is
meaty, leading-man stuff for once. “Weeelll,” he demurs, “this being me, I
never see it as that. I always think, well, what can you do with this?”
The company manager brings us some mugs of tea. “ Jamais de sucre
!” says Griffiths as he sips. “And no biscuits . . .” It’s not clear whether
he’s railing at his own strictures or other people’s. He is undeniably a
large man, who moves slowly. But he has an equally undeniable grace, and a
disarming way of flashing his top teeth at you that instantly transforms him
into your secret best friend.
Still, he is worried about the stamina that he’ll need for this role. For the
first time since Volpone in 1983, he plays a character who never leaves the
stage. Hector from The History Boys may have won him Olivier and Tony
awards, but he dropped in and out of the action. In Equus everything
is from Dysart’s point of view.
“The learning of it is absolutely murderous,” Griffiths sighs. “Shakespeare
wrote massive roles for people, but they never did a fourth act. That was
their coffee break. They sat down and got ready for the big push at the end.
Here, it’s a white-knuckle ride from the first speech.”
Sitting at the end of rehearsals in a studio in South London, Griffiths is
engaging company. But he’s an actor whose characters tend to be putting on a
performance themselves. He creates his own space, his own rhythms, follows
his own tune. A question about authority figures leads to a rambling
rumination on Israel and Palestine. Whether he’s deep into his difficult
role, or just reluctant to talk about himself, he’s charming verging on
filibustering.
But there is a strong moral underpinning to Griffiths. He tuts at the decline
of manners that followed the gaining of freedoms in the days of “flower
power”. And on several occasions, performing The History Boys
in 2004 and Heroes in 2005, he’s chided people from the stage when
their mobile phones have gone off.
“That’s been misrepresented a lot,” he says. “That’s not about me, it’s not
about the people on stage, who gives a toss about what they think? It’s
about the rest of the audience. The capital offence here is disrespect to
your neighbour. People make massive efforts of time, money and labour to get
there, and for that to be ruined by some tosser who can’t be bothered to
switch off his phone is really bad.”
He was in despair, he says, when he found out that theatre studies had become
the “sexiest” subject at school. He fears that young people think being an
actor means being a millionaire.
“And that’s not how it works. I am part of the top 1 per cent of British
actors. It’s nothing to do with being swell-headed: I make a living at it.
Only one in a hundred does. Everybody else is struggling. Equity sent me a
letter before Christmas saying, great news, as of January 2007 nobody will
be asked to work in the West End for less than £350 a week! Working in our
nation’s capital for £350 a week, how is that doable?”
So he won’t be retiring quite yet. Of his two most iconic roles, neither
brought buckets of cash. Two years in The History Boys “has been a
great marker for me. But it was bankrupting to do it.” The original National
Theatre cast took it to Broadway last year, despite some fears that this
tale of gobby Northern sixth-formers would appear parochial. “I was quite up
for the idea that we’d be back inside a week, because I was ready for a
holiday. It was much to my regret that it was actually a huge hit!” But he
never grew tired of the play. “The last night in New York, I was still
trying out new ideas. It was as fresh as that. I loved it.”
As Uncle Monty in Withnail and I (1986), he earned five weeks’ wages.
Like everyone else involved, he’s never seen anything else from it. A few
years ago he suggested to the director Bruce Robinson and others who worked
on the film that they remortgage their houses and club together to buy the
rights to it. The others declined.
So when a production company asked him to appear in a Withnail documentary,
he stayed pragmatic. “I said: ‘Sounds pretty cool. How much are you paying?’
And they said: ‘No, no, Bruce Robinson and Richard Grant aren’t asking for
money.’ And I’m going: ‘Of course not, they don’t need money because they
need to promote their recent publications and you’re very kindly going to
help them do that. And that’s fine. What happens when it’s finished?’ ‘Well,
it goes on Channel 4.’ ‘Yeah? Where else does it go? Don’t disrespect my
intelligence. There’s a serious pot of money here and I want some.’ ”
They wouldn’t pay so he didn’t appear. “A year later they brought out the DVD
of Withnail , and it said ‘plus hour-long documentary’.” He raises
his eyebrows. “It’s that degree of duplicity that I find despicable. And
it’s always been around with that film. Everyone who made it did their job
honourably. But everybody that’s profited from it has behaved like an
absolute piece of sewage.”
But surely Uncle Monty got him work? “No. Nothing. I do not recall one role
that came my way because of it.”
In Equus , Dysart questions whether his profession actually helps
anyone. Does Griffiths wonder about the worth of his own job, I wonder?
He tells a story about a woman who decided not to kill herself after seeing a
production of The Comedy of Errors that made her laugh for the first
time in four years . He talks about tragic drama, and how it’s a
ritual sacrifice to Dionysius — “He’s my pagan god, is Dionysius.” He talks
about the beauty of catharsis — “If you laugh, you flood your system with
endorphins, which are health-giving. If you cry, you experience an empathy
with an audience that makes you better able to cope with your life.
“So,” he concludes, “from that kind of moral standpoint it’s desperately
important stuff. On the other hand,” he adds, baring his teeth one last
time, “it’s just a f***ing play.”
Equus starts previews at the Gielgud, W1 (0870 9500915), on Friday
and opens on Feb 27
