The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 54

(page 27 Geoffrey Household's thirties thriller about a slightly mad English gentleman playing them is one of O'Toole's fortes, ironically so, considering his own working-class Irish antecedents who sets out to kill Hitler and is tracked to earth by his own Teutonic equivalent. It marked the actor's return to television after a ten-year absence and was hailed as a brilliant performance. Yet the same year saw one of his most inglorious and unqualified failures, Dead Eyed a play which, interestingly, O'Toole sponsored himself. It was hammered for dreadful self-indulgence by the critics at the Dublin Theatre Festival where it 6 opened and did so badly in the provinces that it never reached London. Shortly afterwards another of his films, The Stunt Man, was unable to find a British distributor.

His failures make Macbeth all the more crucial for O' Toole. Success would set the seal on the new life he has forged for himself. The vile blows and buffets of the world have not incensed him to recklessness; rather the reverse. For a start, this is the most serious role he has tackled in the theatre since Hamlet; he chose it because "it is a wonderful play and a wonderful role" and because he felt the time was right for him to do it. He takes it on in the context of a new appointment as Associate Director of the Old Vic, his first time in such a capacity.

O'Toole's associations with the Old Vic go back 25 years and the return has the feel of a rejuvenation. He was one of the original members of Sir Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company when it was based there. He feels deeply about the Vic's history and its survival. When he was approached by Timothy West, the new Artistic Director, he readily accepted the opportunity to try to influence the policies of a leading company as well as act for it. "We are two very different sorts of people and, I hope, complementary," Timothy West explains.

"I work well within this organisation and Peter works without it, and that enlarges the horizons. We approach productions differently. I am interested in intellectual grasp and psychological truth and Peter in visual excitement. I think it is a very good arrangement." "My idea is simple," says O'Toole. "To return to the Old Vic and what the Old Vic means and stands for, which is a conservatoire for actors and acting, doing the best of the playwrights, primarily Shakespeare.

We get a grant from the Arts Council, but I would prefer to lose it and live or die by the box office. If we can't live, then we shouldn't be there. Nothing can disguise mediocrity." The subsidy which the Old Vic cannot do without, however, is that provided in effect by its actors. "The Vic has always been run by film stars," he says. "Look at its history.

Anyone who works at the Vic is, by definition, subsidising it." He intends to keep up 30 TELEGRAPH SUNDAY MAGAZINE I love the traditions, the robes, the blood. Our drama came from the church the mystery plays. It's fortunate for the Church that I chose the theatre." "The theatre is no place for tentative gropings" film and television work to that end. gary," he snorts. He dismisses the His present sojourn there is being National Theatre.

"What might Chrisfinanced by two recently completed topher Wren have done with all that television films. Strumpet City is a cement." He deplores experimental seven-part adaptation of James Plun- theatre. "The theatre is no place for kett's saga of Dublin at the turn of the tentative gropings. It is for certainty century when the troubles were and conviction. Experiment enough is merely a reference to the strikes and to get my bones out of the dressing lockouts of the period; O'Toole room and on to the stage and see if it travelled to the Monte Carlo Tele- will work." vision Festival earlier this year to try His conviction is reflected in other to find buyers for it.

Masada is an spheres of his life. He says he has eight-hour Hollywood television epic stopped drinking. "It wasn't difficult. in which O'Toole plays a particularly I just stopped. I drank because I nasty Roman general in the story of enjoyed it, not to solve a problem or the Dead Sea massacre of the Jewish because I needed a crutch.

It was easy Zealots. to give up." His private life is more settled, too. His lives with his two he appointment to the daughters, Pat and Kate, now aged Old Vic has given new 17 and 20, and his mother-in-law who vigour to his thoughts did not leave his Hampstead home on the theatre. When when her daughter did. He likes the he speaks of it he is eloquent arrangement.

"I tried marriage, I had and forthright. He chain quite a lot of practice and performance. smokes French cigarettes I am not in any hurry to remarry." rapidly, but not From time to time he likes to withnervously, as he parades his opinions. draw to the sanctuary of his cottage in He scorns London theatre for being Galway in the West of Ireland which dreary. "It's so commercial and he fitted out during one of those long unenterprising." He praises the absences from stage and screen.

repertory companies of Dublin and Again it is a return to roots. He was Bristol and is contemptuous of the born in Ireland and brought up a financial demands on the Arts Council Catholic. "I love the ceremony and by theatre companies. "Beggars. Beg- the whole notion of transubstantiation; ONE OF THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS FOR WOMEN JOURNALISTS Over the past ten years a number of encourage other young women between Fleet Street's best women writers have the ages of 18 and 30 in their aspirations made their mark in journalism as a to be writers.

result of a single award. The Catherine Any girl resident in Britain and workPakenham Memorial Award has brought ing, or seriously intending to work, in for writers like Polly Toynbee, Catherine journalism is eligible. Entrants are Stott, Bel Mooney, Tina Brown, Valerie invited to submit a sample of their Grove and Sally Beauman both the journalistic work, which must be not spotlight of national attention and a cash less than 700 words and not more than prize to further their journalistic careers. 2,500 words long. It can consist of either This year that prize has been doubled to published or unpublished work, but in £500.

the latter case entrants must have had With such a distinguished catalogue some journalistic work published. To of past winners and runners up, the enter send a stamped addressed envelope Award, now in its 11th year, has come for the rules and an entry form to Sally to be regarded as one of the most Baker, Secretary, Catherine Pakenham prestigious of its kind. Memorial Award, Coutts Co, 188 It was founded by the family and Fleet Street, London EC4. friends of Lady Catherine Pakenham, The entries will be judged by a disthe youngest daughter of the Earl and tinguished panel of writers and journalCountess of Longford, who was killed ists. They are the Countess of Longford in a car crash in 1969.

At the time (Chairman), Marina Warner, Valerie Catherine Pakenham was working Grove, William Davis, Ronald Harwood along with Gina Richardson, who was and John Anstey, the Editor of the killed with her on the editorial staff of Telegraph Sunday Magazine. The closing The Daily Telegraph Magazine. In date for this year's competition is her memory the Award was instituted to September 15, 1980. It is perhaps in Galway that Peter O'Toole is most himself. For all the bluff amiability and bar-room bravado of those early days O'Toole has always been a nervous man, timid at the core.

He still does not watch his own films. He finds them embarrassing; they lead to self-conscious acting. "The best time to see a movie is about ten years after the event when you can be completely distant from it." He never really drops his guard in dealing with the outside world and his close friends are few and generally of long-standing. They speak warmly of him of his generosity to those he knew before he became famous, of his tremendous sense of dedication to his work, of his loyalty to his ex-wife, of his devotion to his daughters. He is fond of saying that Kate takes after him.

He describes her as serious and introspective. It was to his cottage in Galway that 0'Toole retreated to prepare Macbeth. Before rehearsals start he requires what he calls "private "It is the only way to approach acting: unobserved, uninitiated, protracted private study of the role and the play." After that he arranged for key members of the cast to travel out there to rehearse. Frances Tomelty is Lady Macbeth, Brian Blessed plays Banquo and Donald Sutton plays Macduff. Ireland is a part of his life he usually keeps very much to himself and his very few close friends.

"Work is for horses," he argues. "I love pleasure, although the balance of pleasure and pain is important." In Ireland his pleasures are many. The place, the people, the solitude, the normality. There he jots down his poetry: "Unpublishable and unpublished. It is probably rubbish.

Maybe I'll get knocked down by a bus and they'll be published posthumously and you will find I am a genius. I am disqualified by my age from the sports I love: running, rugby and boxing. But I shoot rabbits. Big game," he adds ruefully. These pleasures have been abjured while he works on Macbeth.

O'Toole is not a superstitious man but he falls prey to the theatre's traditions about Macbeth. The play is supposed to be jinxed and to perform it is believed to invite trouble. Actors try not to mention it by name and use euphemisms like Aimez-vous The Caledonian Tragedy, Monarch of the Glen, and so on. O'Toole has invented his own: The Harry Lauder Show. "I do believe that from the pages there emanates an evil," he says and touches wood.

But present fears are less than horrible imaginings and Peter O'Toole had enough on without worrying about thespian curses. He went off. There was work to do on the costumes and designs..