The Prince of Darkness
30 August 1992
A wickedly good actor, ALAN RICKMAN has made
a virtue of villainous parts from a debauched French aristo to a German
terrorist. Now, as he takes on Hamlet, we will see whether, like other great
Danes (right), he has that within which passeth show
E'LL start with a couple of Latin terms . . ." It
is 1985, and in Les
Liaisons Dangereuses the Vicomte de Valmont is giving a teenage
girl a classical education in sex. It is a cold-blooded seduction pressed
home with the utmost civility of expression. Everyone in the audience is
watching Valmont, they can't help it: he is bad, this man, but he is worryingly
interesting. He prowls the stage like a big cat luxuriating in his own body.
The beautiful, languorous voice coddles his words into a passing impression
of tenderness before letting them go with a dying fall. He smiles at the
girl, but only with his mouth: the eyes are quite dead. This is what wickedness
looks like: a place beyond morality where the body and its desires are working
overtime. The heart has rusted to dust, corroded by irony and loathing.
It was one of the great performances of the last decade.
Lindsay Duncan, who played the Marquise, the Vicomte's co-voluptuary, remembers
the effect he had: "A lot of people left the theatre wanting to have
sex, and most of them wanted to have it with Alan Rickman."
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'A lot of people left the theatre wanting to have sex,
and most of them
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| One bad guy led to another. Last year Rickman was Sheriff
of Nottingham to Kevin Costner's sappy greenwood hero in Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves. The subtitle could have been written for Rickman,
who stole the film from Costner by turning the Sheriff into a balletic psychopath,
the barking offspring of Frank Zappa and a Dobermann pinscher. The comedy
came from Rickman's playing off Python content against an arch high style.
The Los Angeles Daily News said he saved the film, ad-libbing through
a script creaking with political correctness: "Cancel the leavings
for lepers and orphans! No more merciful beheadings. And call off Chrisss-tmass!"
There were familiar weapons from the Rickman armoury and some new strings
to the beau: the half-closing of the hooded hazel eyes in moments of savage
ennui, the sibilant irritation: "Not now," he rasps at someone
as he tries to penetrate a reluctant Maid Marion. "I tried to make
him certifiable and funny," Rickman said later. He certainly caused
moral confusion at previews, where audiences cheered him. Costner was not
best pleased and cut Rickman's scenes, reputedly shooting 17 more close-ups
of himself. To no avail. The best lacked all conviction and the worst was
full of passionate intensity. Costner gave it everything he'd got, leaving
you wanting nothing: Rickman, who always holds something back, had us dangling
from every snarl. |
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In Bob Roberts, Tim Robbins's withering satire
on an American election, released here on 11 September, Rickman is Lukas
Hart III, the sharkish campaign manager staring malevolently at the world
through a pair of smoky glasses. Rickman gives him a menace that comes from
doing nothing, from a pathological watchfulness. Howard Davies, who directed
Liaisons, says: "Alan has a fantastic stillness, he stops and
in that moment of contemplation can convey that there are an infinite number
of options. That is the sense of danger."
RICKMAN was born in Acton, west London, in 1947,
the second of four children of Irish-Welsh parents. His father, who was
a painter and decorator, died of cancer when Alan was eight, leaving "a
devastating sense of grief' and very little money. Rickman says he was born
a card-carrying member of the Labour Party. It wasn't radical posturing
that led him to appear in the party's broadcast on the eve of the general
election. Rima Horton, his partner of 20 years and an economics lecturer,
was the Labour candidate in Chelsea. When he talks now about his own bankability,
how much he got paid for Die Hard, he will pull himself up in mid-sentence
and say how barmy it is to be talking about such sums when you think about
unemployed people with children. And he can still make Thatcher a four-letter
word.
At the age of 11, Rickman won a scholarship to Latimer
Upper School, later going on to study graphic design at Chelsea College.
He set up a design business with a few friends and a lot of Letraset in
Soho, but his mind wasn't in it. In 1973, aged 26, he tried for Rada. The
audition, which featured the first Rickman villain--Richard III--won him
a scholarship. Then it was into the long slog of rep and some fine performances
at the Bush and Hampstead in plays by Dusty Hughes and Snoo Wilson. One
Christmas he played a squirrel in panto. You suspect it was not his finest
hour.
In 1979, Rickman had an unhappy stint with the RSC and
left saying he wanted to "learn how to talk to other actors on stage
rather than bark at them". In 1981, he was Trigorin in the Royal Court's
Seagull. Christopher Hampton, author of Liaisons Dangereuses,
remembers: "When he walked on I thought he's much too young, but he
was so convincing as a writer. There was a pain in the performance which
was about having given up hope of being great and accepting second best."
Jonathan Powell, now controller of BBC1, was also there
and cast Rickman in his Barchester Chronicles. One reviewer noted
that in awesome company (Donald Pleasence, Nigel Hawthorne, Geraldine McEwan),
the best performance was given by "an unknown-Alan Rickman". Rickman
wasn't born to play Obadiah Slope, Trollope's slithy tove of a cleric, but
he became him through inspired physical invention. In black frock-coat and
hat he looked like an upended cockroach, his hands clasped in front of him
in an attitude of unyielding piety. It would be impossible to read the book
now and not see Rickman: that tight, strange walk that seemed to go sideways,
the upper lip curling back to reveal the teeth in a half-smile half-snarl,
the divine smugness. And the voice, plangent as the Warden's cello, swelling
with indignation or sliding into humbug humility: "That is certainly
my view, bishop, for what that is worth . . ." David Giles, the director,
says Slope was the hardest part "because it comes nearest to caricature.
Alan gave it a snaky sexiness which made it real." Giles had already
spotted the quality that was to make Rickman the most compelling British
screen actor since James Mason: "The interior life was so fierce, he
was really frightening."
I was supposed to be interviewing Alan Rickman, but he
cancelled,, saying that he didn't feel he had anything to say. Which was
a shame, but not a surprise. Of all actors he is the most contemptuous of
interview blather. But he has plenty to say about his work when it
counts. Howard Davies once told a magazine that actors needed to find a
trait they could love in a character. "Alan rang up furious. He sets
out by exploring the pathology of character. He cuts them open and looks
for what makes them weak or bad or violent." Hampton remembers Rickman
had "very strong views about how to play Valmont which fortunately
turned out to be extremely sensible." A lot of the contributions he
made were physical details. "He insisted on having his frock-coat unrealistically
long and wearing a beard, because he had this image of what Valmont looked
like." Something Rickman invented in rehearsal became part of the play.
"Before the rape scene, he runs his hand the whole length of the girl's
body about six inches away from it-it was a simple idea which combined menace
and sensuality. But it had a connoisseur's touch."
A troubling eroticism still marks Rickman out. Stephen
Poliakoff, who wrote the part of the cuckolded husband in Close My Eyes
for him, says: "Alone of English actors he has a combination of great
sex appeal and danger." Geraldine McEwan, about to play Gertrude to
Rickman's Hamlet, says: "It's not to do with that dreadful word fancying.
It's a mesmeric quality; a refined, subtle intelligence in total concentration."
She's right about mesmerising, but there is a dreadful amount of
fancying. The RSC still fields calls from "weak-kneed women" wanting
to know about Rickman.
So where does he go from here? Much depends on his own
scruples: he would be a rich man if he didn't constantly reject trash movies
with "unsound messages". After reading for White Nights,
he quoted Dorothy Parker: "This is not a script to be tossed lightly
away. It should be hurled with great force." His strengths are obvious;
if there is a question-mark it is over his range. The only person who would
say a word against him wondered whether he wasn't a lazy actor; whether
he could let go of that louche, droll persona, and if there was anything
underneath. Hampton offers an answer. He recalls a screen test Rickman did
for David Lean's proposed Nostromo, playing the Hamlet-like role
of an intellectual who can't face up to action and kills himself. "We
ran all the tests and Lean said: 'Your friend, he's the only one who's any
good. He has an extraordinary presence.'" Similar stories suggest that
the only limitation Rickman faces is in the imagination of casting directors.
"No living actor is better equipped for Hamlet.
On him the right sadness sits, and also the right spleen; his gait is a
prowl over quicksand and he can freeze a word with an irony at only mournful
and deadly." Thus Kenneth Tyn on Paul Scofield in 1955, but the same
sense of anticipation surrounds Rickman in 1992. There was no money for
advertising, but 90 percent of the seats are sold. Georgian director Robert
Sturua has a fine cast--McEwan, Michael Byrne, David Burke--but there is
no doubt who everyone wants to see. Qualities that have made Rickman a most
sublime, smiling villain are oddly apt for the torn hero. You can imagine
watching him watching Gertrude watching the players. The threat of something
about to go very badly out of control. And, in the year to come Macbeth
perhaps, Iago certainly, if I can stomach another villain.
We can't be sure what kind of Hamlet Rickman will be.
Whatever he does, he won't be a common Hamlet. He will be an exceptional
Hamlet, Mrs McClane.
Hamlet previews at the Riverside (081-7xx-3354)
from 9 Sept. Opens 15 Sept -10 Oct. then tours to Bradford, Nottingham,
Barrow in Furness. Bob Roberts opens in London on 11 Sept. and goes
on nationwide release on 9 Oct.
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