Wonderful, Truly Wonderful
Derek Jacobi’s speech is littered with superlatives. The word ‘wonderful’ crops up at least 20 times in the half hour I spend with him. Wonderful experiences, wonderful writing, wonderful actors. Tellingly, however, it is never used in reference to himself. For despite his own wonderful career, blisteringly full of wonderful performances, this is a man of vast modesty, truly thankful for his fortune.
In one interview, Jacobi told of three stages to an actor’s professional life – young and talented, experienced and successful, and distinguished and acclaimed – claiming to dread reaching the final status. Twenty years on, I enquire whether he has yet passed that mark. “Oh God. I suppose in a sense I have, although my innate modesty would say no.” The sentence is laden with pauses – a testament to his overwhelming humility. “It’s the most difficult of the three categories.
The expectation is so much higher. You are the favourite in the race. You’ve got to win, or come a very good second. You can no longer surprise – you’ve been around too long. I think maybe if I do a good Lear, I can become distinguished and acclaimed.” At 67, Jacobi is fast approaching what he believes is theatre’s most taxing role. “Lear is monumental. Monumental. To really find that man, and to do what Shakespeare asks of you, is gargantuan.
Several of my generation are gearing up to playing it. Corin [Redgrave] is playing it soon. Gambon actually played it a long time ago. McKellen’s going to play it in about two years, so I’ll leave it about five. As long as nothing’s dropped off and I can still move and speak, and I’ve got the energy.” Stemming from Jacobi’s slender and tidy frame is this remarkable voice. Its fluctuations are extreme, suddenly booming, before dropping to an ever-articulate, gaspy hush.
Every word is coloured, from its clipped consonants to its lavishly extended vowels. Presently, Jacobi is playing Prince Phillip of Spain in Friedrich Schiller’s Don Carlos at the Gielgud Theatre, which he admits to finding bemusing: “Schiller on Shaftesbury Avenue. Very odd, indeed.” Even more bizarre, then, will be its transfer to Broadway next autumn – all growing from the ‘little acorns’ of Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre. “It was a difficult rehearsal period.
I had great problems with King Phillip. It’s a difficult part for anybody, but I think it was a million miles away from me and my own personality.” The play centres around the Spanish monarchy at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Carlos, Phillip’s son, remains devastatingly in love with his father’s young wife, Elizabeth, and looks to regain his childhood sweetheart whilst snatching the throne to restore order to his country.
Aided by his best friend, the Marquis of Pozer, amidst the King’s emotional turmoil, he almost succeeds. Almost. At its heart, the tale is incredibly human. As Jacobi explains, “it’s not simply a historical pageant. For me, the key to Phillip was this emotional, psychological journey he goes on. To end up where he began, but worse. He starts as this closeddown rigid autocrat, whose heart is touched and he is betrayed.
He lashes out, he murders and goes back to this rigidity, but even worse.” Critics have acclaimed Jacobi’s latest performance as the best of his career. Yet he hasn’t read reviews since the late 1960s, when playing his first lead role at the National. Then – before he had even seen the papers – he found himself commiserated on the reviews. “I suddenly realised that was all I needed to know. I didn’t need to read how bad they were or what they said.
It’s amazing how quickly you get to know if the reviews have been good or bad. Many people unwittingly let you know. They congratulate you on your reviews, not your performance. Some will say: ‘Marvellous reviews – don’t read The Times.’ So you know you’ve got a bad review in The Times.” Don Carlos is the latest in a line of historically-based roles for Jacobi.
Over the years, he has played the Grand Master Inquisitor, Stanley Baldwin, Adolf Hitler, Francis Bacon and, of course, Emperor Claudius – the role that rocketed him to fame in the mid-1970s. Jacobi started his formal acting career in Birmingham where, following a series of begging letters, he joined the repertoire company. “At the end of three years, I was playing Shakespeare’s Henry VII, and Laurence Olivier was out the front, talentspotting.
By luck, he gave me a job, and I was with him at the National for the next eight years. So, for the first 11 years of my career I wasn’t out of work. Incredibly lucky.” Nothing to do with talent, of course. His first screen credit came as Cassio to Olivier’s Othello in 1965. Olivier was something of a mentor for the young Jacobi: “He was extraordinary because he had everything. He had talent. He had the voice, charisma, looks. He was a movie star, as well as a theatre performer.
He did it all.” Jacobi has always preferred theatre – even though he admits his bank manager prefers film. His theatrical peak, for many, came during the RSC’s repertoire of 1982, for which he won a Tony and an Olivier, amongst other accolades. “At the end, they had taken all the plays out of the repertoire except those I was in, so I was doing Benedick, Peer Gynt, Prospero and Cyrano, every night – one a night for about a month. There must have been thousands and thousands of lines.
I can’t conceive of it now.” The shows (“beautiful, beautiful productions”) transferred to New York in 1985. “On the last night of Cyrano, obviously people had seen it more than once, the people in the front row had brought champagne, and they sprayed the curtain call, like the end of a motor rally. I got so excited I bit my nose off and threw it into the audience.” A rare moment of justified exuberance one imagines, which also symbolised a man totally cured of his demons.
For three years prior to the initial run, Jacobi was wracked by stage fright. His hand bounces shiftily upon the armrest: “The first one to open was Much Ado, and that first night I was almost catatonic with fear, it was agony. Stage fright is a disease. Curiously, it affects actors during their success. I don’t know why.” While the nerves remain, they are completely under control today, leading to performances by Jacobi of the utmost conviction and discipline.
Nonetheless, there comes a part of the show the actor dreads each night: the curtain call. “I don’t like them. It’s the ‘all down for who’s best’ I don’t like it, because what we’re doing is as a company. It’s an ensemble.” To be sure, Jacobi’s diffidence is truly wonderful.
21st Apr 2005