My Perfect Mind
One of the most memorable moments in Withnail and I comes when the late, great Richard Griffiths proclaims as Uncle Monty that “it’s the most devastating moment in a young man’s life when he quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I shall never play the Dane’”.
Edward Petherbridge has even more cause to bewail his ill-fortune. Not only was his proposed performance of Hamlet unceremoniously abandoned before rehearsals began but in a matter of days before King Lear was due to start its run in New Zealand, Petherbridge suffered a stroke and consequently never got to play the role once famously named “the Everest of acting”.
In this strange and utterly unique show, Petherbridge recruits Paul Hunter to tell the story of his preparations for the performance that never was, his recovery and all points in between. The result is a bizarre and seemingly chaotic evening that I was desperately hoping would amount to more than it did. Director Kathryn Hunter places Paul Hunter in the part of MC or compere, constantly changing into a range of outrageously cheap wigs in order to take on a variety of roles in Petherbridge’s life – his mother, the director of King Lear, a “borderline offensive” German psychiatrist.
Hunter is consistently entertaining and it is frequently his consummate control over proceedings that keeps the evening on its feet. There is a particularly enjoyable episode where Petherbridge bumps into Hunter in the guise of Olivier, sounding forth about the time he is about to spend on Clash of the Titans.
The evening can be very touching too. Petherbridge is a wonderfully delicate and sensitive actor who has lent his plaintive, melancholy tones to numerous landmark Shakespeare productions over the years. His haunted look in Krapp’s Last Tape still lingers in my memory and he has a light touch which in certain episodes of his rendition of King Lear makes you to long to see him in a finished production. He is clearly a very talented artist too as well as a wonderfully self-deprecating and modest manner, always willing to make himself the punchline of Hunter’s numerous gags.
However, all too often, this does not render the evening immune from charges of self-indulgence. As charming as the shaggy-dog nature of the production can be, it can in equal measure be exasperating. Ad-hoc, semi-audible anecdotes are allowed to wander and fade away and too often the fragmentary collage of scenes forbids us from looking into the actor’s life or the ravages of time in any real depth.
In one telling moment, the two actors observe the the truth is easier to achieve in the theatre than in life. A fascinating thought – I just wish there were more of them in a production that is too often content to settle into its own kookiness. An intriguing show but a missed opportunity.
