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Antiquarian's roadshow
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| Pipe up: Roy Dotrice plays John Aubrey, the Elizabethan Andrew Morton |
When a mid-40s Roy Dotrice first played ageing Elizabethan John Aubrey in his one-
man play Brief Lives, the transformation involved a lot of prosthetics and a rather wispy wig.
Four decades later, as he revives the show in Richmond, Dotrice is a similar age to his subject.
"Actually, I'm almost too old," he chuckles. "Aubrey was 73 and I am 84. But Elizabethans rarely lived over 50, so he was rather a decrepit old gentleman. I still have two hours of make-up to look the part. And he only had one tooth, so I end up looking rather like Bugs Bunny."
Do not be fooled by Aubrey's frail exterior, warns Dotrice, nor his job description. This particular antique antiquarian had a mind as sharp as they come. And far from being a dusty old tome, his book, Brief Lives, was a collection of short gossipy biographies that would give Andrew Morton a run for his money.
"Aubrey was a remarkable man," says Dotrice. "As he puts it: One wonders what uncertainties do we find in printed histories treading on the heels of truth. They dare not speak plain'."
And plain Aubrey spoke. Were he alive today, he would probably be writing, if not for Heat, then certainly for Hello or the Telegraph's Spy column. Among the subjects to fall prey to his pen were Oliver Cromwell, William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh and even Queen Elizabeth I.
However, his own renown was a different story. Aubrey lived for most of his life in "beloved Oxford" and yet, when Dotrice visited his grave at Mary Magdalene Chuch to research the original Brief Lives, he found it marked: "John Aubrey, A Stranger, Died Here."
"That was my adrenalin for all those years," says Dotrice, who made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest-running one-man show.
"When I was doing a matinee performance in Hobart, Tasmania, I was introducing another 300 people to this man, so he was no longer a stranger."
There was a more personal motivation for this revival, though: Dotrice's actress wife, Kay Newman, who died five months ago from cancer.
"I was showing Kay a tape of the show recorded in 1974 and she hated it," he recalls with a wince.
"Over the years, my performance has got really broad, which she didn't like. She told me to cut out all that over-the-top comedy and get down to his words, which in themselves are amusing enough."
Sadly, Kay missed seeing her husband being awarded the OBE in the 2008 New Year's Honours. In her place, Dotrice took his grandchildren, 14-year-old Phoebe and Oscar, nine. The Queen, he reports, said: "I believe you are doing a show about my ancestors."
Meanwhile, his other grandchild Emily (daughter of Karen Dotrice, who played Jane Banks in Mary Poppins) is working as an assistant on Brief Lives. So it's a family affair?
"Yes," says Dotrice fondly, "And I hope my wife is there on the first night watching me. I think she will be."
Brief Lives, Richmond Theatre, The Green, Tuesday, March 25 to Saturday, March 29, 7.45pm, Wed/Sat matinée 2.30pm, 0870 060 6651, richmond theatre.net
8:13am Friday 28th March 2008
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