Tim’s death has hit me hard.
He was a friend and a mentor and, I realize, over a period of fifteen years, I directed him in five different productions. This was only a small part of his huge and varied career, but it affected my life in all kinds of ways and, I think, I hope, brought out the best in him.
The first time I directed Tim was in 1997 when I persuaded him to play Falstaff in both parts of Shakespeare’s mighty epic Henry IV for ETT. He led a terrific company of actors, including Gary Waldhorn as the King, the venerable Joseph O’Connor as Justice Shallow, Paterson Joseph as a very hot Hotspur and, most memorably, his son Sam as Hal: a fine white wine, someone joked, to his father’s full-bodied red.
Unlike some leading actors, Tim had no compunction about playing Falstaff as a bit of a bastard. Thus, while he revelled in Falstaff’s appetites and allowed us to revel in them too, he understood that these were paid for by others, from the long-suffering hostess, Mistress Quickly (Mary MacLeod), and the young prostitute Doll Tearsheet (Lucy Briers), to the poverty-stricken peasants Falstaff corruptly recruits to fight for the king: ‘Food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as good as better’, as he puts it so cynically.
Indeed this political realism, this refusal to see character in simplistic terms, gave Tim’s Falstaff a magnificent three-dimensionality. Audiences laughed one moment, and were appalled the next, but all the time his acting was rooted in the stuff of everyday life. Indeed, my assistant director, Mick Gordon, noticed that while Sam’s script was extensively annotated with dozens of carefully thought-out comments, a page of Tim’s had the simple instruction: ‘Put on boot’. The physical, the everyday was never far away in his approach to acting, and all the better for being so.
A couple of years later, Tim played the deeply flawed Solness in my production of Ibsen’s murky tragedy The Master Builder. Again, moment by moment, step by step, thought by thought, Tim let us into the dark recesses of the ageing master builder’s mind: his fear of his own frailty, but also his mesmerised response to the young Hilde Wangel (Emma Cunniffe), the new generation banging on the door. And, with the late Caroline John as his wife, he showed the agony of a marriage whose flames have turned to dust.
In 2002 I achieved a life’s ambition and directed King Lear. Tim brought an extraordinary clarity to the central part, an attention to the detail of the text, which was truthful and real, psychologically true and quietly devastating. Some felt that he didn’t achieve the leonine roar that some Lears strive for, but the scene of his madness with the blinded Gloucester (Michael Cronin), his reunion with Cordelia (Rachel Pickup) and the final moments of agony (‘pray you, undo this button’) were as moving as anything I’ve ever seen. Again, like Henry IV, the production toured the country before landing at the Old Vic to decent reviews and a successful run.
And then, in 2006, on tour and at the Trafalgar Studios, he played an upper-class English spy exiled in Russia, spending the summer on a dacha outside Moscow with his wife (Jean Marsh). Alan Bennett’s The Old Country isn’t a perfect play and some of the scenes were hard to animate, but Tim, dressed in a tatty cream suit and a ragged Garrick Club tie, brilliantly caught the dyspeptic Hilary desperately missing England but hating what he knows it has become, defending his own acts of treachery while raging against the dying of the light.
The last time I directed Tim was in Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy at the Rose. Tim played Arthur, the independent minded father fighting the good fight against injustice and let us see both the character’s frailties with his determination that a better world was possible. Somehow, in Tim’s hands, the play’s great motto ‘Let right be done!’, spoke loud and clear to an audience increasingly concerned that justice wasn’t for everyone. It was greeted with cheers and raucous applause.
So what was it about Tim that made him such a marvellous actor?
I think it’s a combination of several things, all of which are related to who he was as a man.
Tim’s acting was never showy, but he knew well how to fascinate; he was never vulgar, but he could be extremely funny; his approach was serious but never doctrinaire, innovative but never modish, quicksilver but not eccentric. He was never bombastic, vain, or pretentious. He had a beautiful voice and an expressive face, and used those to communicate the simplest truths.
Tim in rehearsal was energetic, robust and positive, but also self-deprecating, ironic and shy. He could detect bullshit from a hundred yards, but was open to experimentation and the new. He came from a theatrical family and belonged to a mighty tradition, but he understood that the artform was continually changing and had a passionate belief in helping young actors and directors be better. He certainly taught me more than anyone I’ve ever worked with.
Tim was a deeply political figure (Tony and Cherie Blair came to Henry IV just before the 1997 election), who had a passionate interest in his audience, whoever they might be or wherever they came from. He rejected the snobbery that is so common in the theatre, and combined broad popular appeal with personal integrity, a commitment to quality with an insistence on accessibility, and an unshakeable commitment to the enduring value of regional theatre.
With Tim’s death, the British theatre has lost one of its finest. He was an extraordinary actor, but he was also an extraordinary man, driven by decency, boundless good humour and an unshakeable belief in his fellow human beings. We are all in his debt.
May we learn from his many qualities and may his memory be a blessing.
