It’s just devastating to lose Tony. It’s hard to believe such a bright light has gone out and that a friendship I took for granted has gone for good.
I was interested in him from early on because we went on a similar trajectory from the fringe to the Royal Court to the RSC and National Theatre. He seemed always to be in a i state of wonderment that he was anything to do with the British theatre establishment and he never lost that. It set him apart from the general theatre social milieu.
He was very private, quite shy. I think he always felt that in some way he was an outsider, probably until he met Greg [partner Gregory Doran] who we all feel so desperate for. They had a really beautiful relationship and I hope we can all rally round and help to keep Greg upright.
Our first show together was Twelfth Night for the RSC, but since I played Viola and he was Malvolio, we only had literally seconds together on stage when he delivers the ring from Olivia. When it came to working together in Macbeth, I was very trepidatious. It’s always the case with Shakespeare that there’s a socking great leading role for a man and the woman has to shape herself around that man.
In the case of the Macbeths, there’s a great symbiotic energy that makes a lot of sense of the play. Even so, some actors seem to sideline their Lady Macbeth – they have a lot of stage time to enjoy without her. Not Tony. He agreed that the motor of the play was the marriage, the lack of children, the unfulfilled nature of this couple who were nearing the end of their window of opportunity to grab power. It turned the whole thing on its head from me worrying he’d be a solo performance to him being almost embarrassingly generous about giving me focus.
He could be demanding in the right way- he wanted to get things right. There was one special rehearsal I remember when he suggested we explore what it would be like to have real blood to act with and really sharpened daggers. He pointed out that too often you see actors waving their weapons around like the toys they are instead of investing them with real danger. We all get very used to the sight of Kensington Gore [fake blood]. So we had a whole evening rehearsing with lethally sharpened daggers and real pig’s blood! The memory of that stayed with us and made us behave quite differently on stage when we went back to using the usual props.
Tony also interviewed two murderers in order to find out what it was like to go through that experience.He was interested that some murderers seem to have no remorse and others are haunted with PTSD. One of those he met said “That Shakespeare must have done a murder – he gets it so right.”
Tony fought for the right things. He picked his battles. He cared about the company and wanted it to be its best. I smile when I remember him fighting for me and him to have separate dressing rooms for Macbeth. Normally in the Swan Theatre it’s men in one room, women in the other. But the main house was doing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Tony said “If Mr and Mrs Beaver can have two separate rooms, so can Mr and Mrs Macbeth!”
We worked together again on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Playing Willy Loman showed how Tony excelled at reaching the outsider, the fighter, the underdog, without being sentimental or self-pitying – that’s why the production worked. I don’t like the awards system, the way it pits one performance against another, but Tony should have won an award for his performance as Willy. Somehow he was overlooked and I expect that kind of thing hurt him.
He could be very jokey, loved a bit of a gossip and he was loyal. I will always remember feeling very proud to stand alongside him at our first curtain call for Macbeth. He didn’t take a solo bow – he brought me on with him, as if to say “This has been a play about two people.” Tony was one of the greats, but he never acted like it.
