Alan Rickman: The Unauthorised Biography by Paton Maureen

Author:Paton, Maureen [Paton, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2012-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

9. IMMORTAL LONGINGS

THE FOYER OF the Royal Court Theatre in London’s Sloane Square is well accustomed to the odd loud-mouthed wino who comes in from the cold steps outside. No problem. Even after it reopened in February 2000 with an urban-chic redesign which included a front-of-house revamp that left the box-office looking more like the maitre d’s desk at a fashionable restaurant, the home of the theatrical angry brigade can still cope with noise pollution on any scale. If the evening – either on or off the stage – has been completely devoid of what Dr Feelgood used to call firkin this and firkin that, I never feel I’ve had my money’s worth from the Court. The old 70s chocolate-and-orange decor of the main house used to scream at you, of course; and if you’re a sensitive vegetarian, the gorgeous new leather seats now scream at you instead. And even after its refit, the late-Victorian building that first introduced George Bernard Shaw’s loquacious jaw-jaw to British audiences still regularly rattles to the sound of the tube trains entering and leaving the underground station next door. It’s not a place to go for a quiet time.

However, a public shouting-match between the actor Alan Rickman and the theatre director Jules Wright over their rival bids to run the Riverside Studios arts centre shocked even the hard cases. Three years later, everyone at the Court still remembered the row.

The acrimonious confrontation took place on 28 November 1993, the night of departing Artistic Director Max Stafford-Clark’s fund-raising party for his new Out Of Joint theatre company. That well-known character, ‘Arfur (Half of) London’, had been invited to send Max on his way; all the more amazing, then, that the furious exchange of views between the irate Alan and Jules was never leaked to the outside world.

What Jules now describes as ‘a fairly monumental row in which everyone else was extremely entertained’ was the culmination of five months of tension and acrimony directed towards Jules Wright.

The so-called ‘Rivergate’ affair in the summer of 1993 led to a furious campaign in the Press by the supporters of Alan Rickman and the producer Thelma Holt, who headed a starry consortium to take over a dilapidated white elephant in West London’s Hammersmith. It was their ambition to turn it into a new Royal National Theatre.

Among the allegations were stories about a missing – perhaps stolen – document that was leaked to the Press, plus the extraordinary sight of Alan Rickman handing a queue of bemused theatre-goers copies of a published letter of support from leading theatre critics. That kind of activism hardly goes with the languid image of a man who likes chaise-lounging around.

The previous year had begun exceptionally well for Rickman’s career, but Rima’s political ambitions were to be bitterly thwarted. On 26 January 1992, Alan was named Best Actor in the London Evening Standard Film Awards for his threefold triumph in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Close My Eyes and Truly Madly Deeply. For her performance in the latter, his friend Juliet Stevenson deservedly won the Best Actress trophy.

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