Postcards from Orton, pointers from Pinter: Kenneth Cranham looks back
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Version 0 of 1. Florian Zeller’s The Father, told through the confused eyes of a senile old man, received glowing reviews when it was performed in Bath last year. But its star, Kenneth Cranham, who returns to the lead role in the London transfer, isn’t going to make the mistake of reading what the critics say. Not after what happened when he chanced upon a complimentary review of his performance in Gaslight at the Old Vic in 2007. “It talked about how light on my feet I was.” He sighs ruefully. “Well, I was never light on my feet again after that.” The astonishment with which The Father has been greeted has not, however, passed him by. “My agent said, ‘It’s not a play, it’s an experience.’” Everything in it is ever-so-slightly skew-whiff. Strangers wander into the home of pyjama-clad Andre, addressing him as an intimate. Single roles are shared among various actors in a subtly changing set, so that the viewer, like the lead character, can never be certain of anything. Where the traditional Alzheimer’s narrative encourages pity, The Father never allows us to know more than Andre. “If I get it right,” says Cranham, “you should be on his side.” Related: The Father five-star review – a savagely honest study of dementia We are at the Tricycle theatre in north-west London. Wearing a black jacket and knotted blue silk scarf coupled with navy tracksuit bottoms, Cranham resembles a mythical beast: the top half of Noël Coward, the bottom half of Danny Dyer. His mouth is framed by bright white bristles, his hair short, spiky and silver. He is 70 but gets cast older. “When they hire someone in their 80s, they tend to fall asleep on trains and miss the matinee.” Not that he is claiming spring-chicken status: “My memory’s not what it was.” Doesn’t that suit playing Andre? “No! You need to give people their cues.” He pushes out a blast of rasping laughter. Modern viewers will know the Scottish-born actor from playing grizzled heavies in British crime movies such as Layer Cake and Gangster No 1; or from historical epics including the HBO series Rome. He was the star of the comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon, set in London’s east end after the second world war, which drew audiences of 14 million in the 1980s. These days he might pop up alongside, say, Tom Cruise (in Valkyrie) or Angelina Jolie (Maleficent). “It’s the nearest we mortals will get to the Spain of Velázquez,” he says. Cranham has no need to rely on reflected glory, though: he has enough of his own. He was a friend to Joe Orton, then to Harold Pinter. Both playwrights regarded him as a skilful interpreter of their writing. During the 1966 revival of the macabre farce Loot, Orton returned from his mother’s funeral in Leicester with an unusual addition to the prop cupboard. “There’s a scene where my character has to catch his mum’s false teeth and use them as castanets,” Cranham recalls. “On that occasion, I cupped my hands and saw them turning in the air above me, almost in slow motion. I could tell these weren’t the usual glossy ones. These were mildewed. They were Joe’s mum’s.” Orton was murdered in 1967 by his partner, Kenneth Halliwell, shortly before Loot transferred with Cranham to Broadway. “Joe’s writing would have got better and better. He was just beginning.” Pinter, the next big presence in Cranham’s career, was one of the readers at Orton’s funeral. “When I was in The Homecoming, I asked him, ‘What can you tell me about Max?’ He said, ‘The thing about Max is he’s a liar and he’s a butcher.’” And of Aston in The Caretaker, Pinter said: “He’s a gent. When he comes home with the tramp at the start, he hasn’t talked to another person for 10 years. At the end, he’s not going to talk to anyone for another 20.” Cranham looks gobsmacked even now. “They’re notes and a half, they are.” Best of all was when Cranham played Stanley opposite Pinter as the terrifying Goldberg in a TV production of The Birthday Party. “I said: ‘Harold, I don’t know who Stanley is.’ He said: ‘Funny. All the Stanleys say that.’” Cranham remembers picturing endless Stanleys disappearing towards the horizon like Easter Island statues. “Pinter was an only child, you know. I was on my own until I was 10, so many of my games were of the imagination. If you’re going to write or act, a spell as an only child is very useful.” Recently Cranham was on location in southern Morocco: “They say when you drown, your life flashes before you. In southern Morocco, it trundles by very slowly. You can see it all quite clearly. Everything is overlapping now.” He rummages in his case to give me a copy of a postcard Orton sent him from Morocco in 1966 (“The villa is v. posh. Not me at all … But I’m v. happy”) and pulls out some miniature collages of old photos from his archives. One shows images from a mid-1970s revival of Entertaining Mr Sloane, in which Beryl Reid and Harry H Corbett competed for the sexual favours of Cranham (as the amoral young stud Sloane). “I make these collages on A3 size then reduce them,” he says. “I do it with scissors and glue, but my eyes aren’t what they were. It’s quite time-consuming.” Then another laugh starts rattling in his throat. “It’s the fucking acting that gets in the way!” • The Father is at the Tricycle, London NW6, until 13 June. |