Poirot and Me (24 page)

Belgian. Indeed, one of the nicest things that

happened while I was filming in Austria was

that the four two-hour Poirots that we had

made

finally

emerged

on

American

television, starting with The ABC Murders on

19 November 1992. The New York Times’s

John J. O’Connor was particularly kind,

noting that the Poirot series started

immediately after my appearance in The

Secret Agent on the same channel in the

United States, and thereby gave the

audience ‘another opportunity to savour a

gifted actor’s versatility’.

‘Mr Suchet’s Poirot’, he went on, ‘is now a

paragon of charming ego and unquestionable

shrewdness . . . “Poirot” just keeps getting

better. Much like Mr Suchet.’ Mr O’Connor set

the tone for most of the American reviews,

which were almost all equally flattering.

What those critics did not know, however,

was that I had no idea whether I was ever to

get the opportunity to make my Poirot any

better.

The Americans liked the series so much

that they even granted the show the

accolade of a cartoon in the New Yorker

magazine, with the title ‘Hercule Parrot’. It

featured a parrot with a Poirot-like

moustache saying, ‘A cracker, s’il vous plait.’

I wondered what Dame Agatha would have

made of it.

It was in early December 1992, when I

was sitting in my hotel room in Vienna

during the filming of Lucona, that the first

indication of what the future might hold for

me came in a telephone call from my agent

in England at the time, Aude Powell – and it

had nothing whatever to do with Poirot.

Aude rang me to say that the playwright

Harold Pinter was very interested in casting

me in a new play by the American playwright

David Mamet, called Oleanna, which he was

going to direct.

‘Harold would like you to read the script as

soon as you can,’ she said.

At that moment I knew nothing about the

play, but I did know that no actor could

refuse an opportunity to work with probably

the most gifted English playwright of the

second half of the twentieth century on a

play written by one of the great talents of

the American theatre in the same period.

Oleanna

represented

a

tremendously

exciting opportunity, and I did not intend to

let it slip away without exploring it carefully.

I read the play within a week and realised

that mine was a wonderful role. I could not

wait to tell Harold that I would love to play

it. I was to play the college lecturer John in

Mamet’s ferocious examination of sexual

harassment and exploitation in American

universities. My character is accused by

Carol, a female student, of attempted rape,

abuse of power and ‘classism’, and his career

is destroyed by the allegations.

The play had only been performed once

before, in the United States, when Mamet

had directed his wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, as

Carol and William H. Macy as John. It had

provoked an enormous response, not to say

a controversy, with Newsweek magazine’s

famous theatre critic Jack Kroll describing it

by saying, ‘Mamet has sent a riveting report

from the war zone between the genders and

the classes, a war that will cause great

havoc before it can create a new human

order.’

The so-called ‘Butcher of Broadway’, the

New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich,

had enthused, ‘John and Carol go to it with

hand-to-hand combat that amounts to a

primal struggle for power’ with ‘highly

distilled dialogue unencumbered by literary

frills or phony theatrical devices’. Mamet

himself had asked Pinter to direct the play in

London.

I was fascinated. It was a unique

opportunity to appear in what could become

one of the great new plays of the last

quarter of the century, a work that had never

been performed anywhere other than New

York, and offered me the chance to return to

the theatre in a part that would utterly

confound the expectations of the television

audience that had grown used to me in

Poirot. Ironically, Harold’s interest came just

as the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot

started on ITV on Sunday, 17 January 1993,

with The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb. It

was to air every Sunday until the first week

of March, and was just as well-received as its

predecessors had been. The audience clearly

did not share my own slight sense of

disappointment, one which Sheila, however,

did share.

Still there was no word from London

Weekend about what they intended for the

future of Poirot, while now there was the

tantalising prospect of Oleanna. I was torn in

two directions, and did not know what to do,

but a week or two after the original call from

my agent Aude, and after I had finished the

script, I got another telephone call from her.

‘I’m terribly sorry to tell you, David,’ she

said, ‘but Harold has decided to go in

another direction for the part of John.’

My stomach did a somersault and my

heart sank because this was a role that I

desperately wanted to play.

‘Please tell Harold that I quite understand,’

I said to Aude, trying to conceal exactly how

upset I was, ‘but would you ask him if he

would be prepared to have coffee with me,

just to discuss his decision?’

Aude said she would, and came back later

that day to say that Harold would be more

than happy to see me.

So, in the early days of February, I found

myself in Harold’s office in his house in

Camden Hill Square in Kensington, London.

He was utterly charming. We talked about

The Lucona Affair, and what else I was

thinking of doing. In fact, we talked for

almost half an hour before the subject of

Oleanna came up.

What I did not realise was that Harold was

using our conversation to audition me.

‘Now look here,’ he said finally. ‘You are

sitting here in front of me because – in

essence – you require me to tell you why I

am going another way in the casting of this

role.’

He paused for what seemed like a very

long time, while I kept absolutely silent.

‘But you know, I have to admit something

to you.’

There was another Pinteresque pause.

‘I have been completely wrong, and I don’t

know whether you will take this as a

compliment or not, but I think you are

perfect casting.’

My jaw dropped, and I struggled to know

what to say. Finally, I thanked him profusely

for the compliment, but then confessed, ‘But,

Harold, I don’t know whether or not I’m

going to be offered another series of Poirot,

though there is a time limit on London

Weekend making an offer, which is very,

very imminent.’

‘Well, there you are, and there it is,’ he

said in his quiet, firm voice. ‘It is for you to

decide. It is yours if you want it, but I have

to know very soon.’ Rehearsals were due to

begin in just a few weeks.

As I left his house, I realised that I had

never been in a situation quite like this in my

life before.

All I could think about was what London

Weekend was going to do about Poirot, and

exactly when the time limit on them having

to make an offer to me ran out. I did not

want to let them down, and would stand by

our agreement to play him again if they

wanted me to, even if that meant me turning

my back on Oleanna, but I was still torn.

As it happened, Sheila and I had decided

to go for a week’s break to my parents’

serviced flat in the Imperial Hotel in

Torquay. There was no point in altering our

plans. I simply asked my agent to re-check

the date by which an offer for Poirot had to

be made, and off we went.

The day of the deadline came, and I heard

nothing at all. To me, that meant that I was

now free of the obligation.

The next morning, I telephoned Aude and

told her to ring Harold and accept the offer

to play John. It was the first time ever in my

five years with the little Belgian that I knew

that I could be saying goodbye to him,

perhaps for a year, perhaps forever.

As a courtesy, I also asked Aude to

telephone

Nick

Elliott,

the

executive

producer of the Poirot series since it began,

to tell him my decision. Within minutes,

Aude rang me back to say that Nick was

desperate to speak to me.

A few moments later, Nick rang. He was

as upset as I was. ‘But you knew we were

going to offer you another series,’ he said,

his voice all but breaking.

‘But I didn’t, Nick,’ I told him. ‘The

deadline passed, and we’d heard nothing.’

‘But we are. We want to shoot again this

summer.’

I felt absolutely terrible. They had given

me this wonderful opportunity to play the

role of Poirot and here I was, letting them

down.

‘I hadn’t heard, Nick. I thought nothing

was going to happen, and so I said yes to

Harold and Oleanna.’

‘Can’t you get out of it?’

‘No,’ I told him sadly. ‘I don’t want to go

back to Harold, and besides, I really want to

play in the theatre again. I haven’t been on

the stage since Timon of Athens in 1990, and

this is a truly wonderful part.’

Nick was very upset, and I felt absolutely

dreadful. I apologised profusely, but I also

knew in my heart that I wanted to do this

play. It fulfilled my ambition to go back to

the theatre and I knew I would be mad to

turn it down. In the end, LWT postponed the

new series for a year and waited for me, but

I had no idea they would do that at the time.

In fact, I wondered if I had lost Poirot

altogether.

How an actor’s life can change, I thought

to myself, as I explained what had happened

to Sheila. If I hadn’t asked Aude to call

Harold and see if I could have coffee with

him in the wake of his decision ‘to go in

another direction’, none of this would ever

have happened.

Actors leap off into the unknown in their

careers, without really ever knowing where

their decisions are going to take them. It has

always been my view that we, as human

beings, go through our lives like spiders

spinning our threads behind us, but only by

looking backwards do we see how the past

affects the present, and how those threads

of our lives fit together.

What I certainly did not know then was

that if I hadn’t made the decision to say

goodbye to Poirot at that moment, I would

never have had the career in the theatre

that I have been lucky enough to enjoy since

then. Just as importantly, however, it also

did not mean that it was the end for the little

Belgian and me.

Chapter 11

‘A VERY LONG WAY

INDEED FROM POIROT’

Harold Pinter’s rehearsals for Oleanna

started just a few weeks after my

decision to leave Poirot altogether, for a year

at least, and they were particularly intense.

As there were just two members of the cast,

the talented young Lia Williams and me,

there was nowhere to hide as Harold,

looking as serious as ever in his habitual

black sweater and thick glasses, took us

through the battleground of the sexes that

David Mamet had constructed in three

lacerating acts.

These were some of the most difficult

weeks I had ever spent in a rehearsal room,

because the play is so consuming, so brutal

about the true nature of the relationships

between men and women, and so filled with

poison that it was all but impossible to keep

those emotions from spilling over into my

own life. Sheila and the children had got

used to the rather benign figure of Poirot