‘He approached death as the next part he was going to play’: Gregory Doran on life after the death of his husband

Sir Gregory Doran asks if I am feeling better. We were supposed to meet a few days prior, but I was ill, and a breakdown in communication means my message didn’t reach Gregory in time, leaving him waiting in a gastropub in Islington on his own. It’s to his credit that he cares how I am, given that he ‘sat there with a lonely gin and tonic looking like a wallflower’ for God-knows how long.

The former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is softly spoken and kind. He lost his husband, the actor Sir Antony Sher, four years ago to liver cancer, and it has clearly shaped who he is today. His book, Walking Shadow, is a tribute to his two great loves: his husband and The Bard.

The book is a detailed exploration of grief; half Sher’s ‘dying diaries’ and half Gregory’s quest to track down as many of Shakespeare’s First Folios as he could, a mission which he termed ‘The Folio Roadshow’. ‘In effect, it was a massive displacement activity,’ he says, looking back. He admits he couldn’t read the diaries for two years after Sher died.

‘I remember him describing the process of dying as being the strangest thing he had ever done. He approached it as the next part he was going to play,’ Gregory recalls. Sher is still omnipresent in his everyday life. Sometimes, when we talk about him it’s like he isn’t really dead at all, just away, perhaps on holiday. The pair met at the RSC and married on the very first day that it was legal for same sex couples to do so in the UK. ‘When I got my knighthood we would have been the first married knights. He’d have appreciated that joke,’ Gregory says, fondly.

A two-time Olivier Award winner, Sher famously played Richard III (on crutches), Falstaff in Henry V Part I and Part 2, Othello’s villainous Iago, and Macbeth, among many more roles. ‘He would morph into the people he was playing,’ says Gregory, who often directed his husband. ‘He was a very private, very unassuming lovely man, and not at all like the people he played.’ Several times he took a role of his to a psychiatrist and asked: ‘Why is this person behaving like this?’ Gregory recalls. When he was preparing to play Macbeth, in a production directed by Gregory, Sher found two murderers to talk to, to help him understand the role. ‘I really worried about it at the time,’ Gregory says.

His love of Shakespeare, really, has been his salvation. ‘I’ve directed all of them. It’s been over a long career, so I’ve never really tired of them,’ he says of the bard’s work. Whether it’s solving the problem of how you show ancient Egypt on stage in Anthony and Cleopatra, or what Vienna means to an English audience today in Measure for Measure, or the classic Shakespearian director’s debacle of: ‘How do you do the donkey’s head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?’ — Gregory remains keen to tackle them all. He calls his relationship with Shakespeare ‘an untainted love affair’. It is one he is truly indebted to. ‘He helped me sort of process and understand and grieve when I lost Tony,’ he says.

Gregory will be speaking at Cambridge Literary Festival about his new book later this month and is currently preparing to revive his celebrated puppetry production of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare’s great narrative poem, for a UK tour this June. Almost every one of his answers below is related to his beloved ‘Tony’. Gregory’s life is dedicated to one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of all time, but Sher’s standout role was not as Macbeth, King Lear or Falstaff — it was as Gregory’s much-missed husband.

Your aesthetic hero

I don’t know who I’d choose really! I have no idea — that’s rather unimaginative of me, isn’t it?

An exhibition that has really impressed you

The Hawaii exhibition at the British Museum, which is really quite astonishing and opens up your eyes to what was, for me, an entirely new cultural novelty.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I don't buy very much, I mean apart from necessities and food. I guess I spend an awful lot — too much money — on books. I did an inventory of all the books in the house to find out just how many I had and discovered that I had nearly 5,000 books. The last one I bought was a book called Year of the Rabbit and it’s about the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It's a graphic novel, the first I've ever bought, and I didn't know if I was going to like it, or what I would think about it, but it really pulls you into the story of these people who live under this terrible murderous reign.

Your favourite painting

That’s easy. My favourite painting is, of course, one by Tony Sher, because he did many. I'm looking at it now across the room. It's a portrait of him and Harriet Walter as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. They're both wrapped around each other. He's behind, hugging her, and it's a painting about their fear, the horror of what they've let themselves in for, and yet it's also about their independence. Their arms look like the loops of a curled snake as they wrap around each other.

A possession you’d never sell

A bust that my oldest and best friend, Richard Sharples, made of Tony. It appears in the book Walking Shadow. It's a beautiful, great likeness of Tony, but it's made of this sort of copper, so it has a kind of organic look. It captures how transient life is, really, because it just feels as though it's impermanent, but at the same time it has a great depth and profundity. It was made for Tony. He saw it before he died, and loved it, and it sits in his study downstairs. I would never part with it.

A book you’ve found inspiring

The Complete Works of Shakespeare — how will that do?

The music you work to

I always have Radio 3 on. I love having music in the house, and Tony did too. We shared our love of music.

The last podcast you listened to

Well, to be honest, I don't listen to podcasts. I did do my own podcast briefly for the RSC about the Folio Roadshow. I have friends who absolutely swear by them, and my brother listens to them all the time, but no, I've not got into podcasts, I'm afraid.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

I don't know, but we had a very interesting thing doing the audiobook of Walking Shadow, because who was going to read Tony's bits? There was a point where I could have had somebody reading my bits as well, which would have been the equivalent of your question. In the end, somebody said: ‘We could recreate Tony’s voice through AI,’ because there's lots of examples of him speaking and acting. I thought to myself, what would Tony have thought of that idea? And he would have roundly said: ‘What, you're going to put another actor out of work?’ So I've cast somebody who is not particularly famous, but a great RSC actor, called Antony Byrne. That was a very interesting piece of casting, because he doesn't sound like Tony really, but luckily I didn't have to cast me.

The items you would take with you to a desert island

I would put the same answer I said on Desert Island Discs. My shelf of photograph albums, because I made one for every year that Tony and I were together.

What gets you up in the morning

I have a project on at the moment and I can’t wait to get up and start writing. Like Tony, writing is an addiction, but I love it.

The items you collect

Grey hairs?

The hotel you could go back and back to

That’s a good question. So, if I say this, will the said hotel be likely to invite me to stay? When I got my knighthood, I got all of my family along and we stayed at Cliveden, which is the hotel near Windsor. It's a wonderful, old, stately home.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

There was a lunch in Nice in the south of France, which was a very simple Bouillabaisse. It was on the harbour in a little restaurant, and it has to be one of the best meals I've ever had.

The best present you’ve ever received

Tony, for my 50th birthday, had a brilliant artist called Michael Leonard paint my portrait. Leonard does these amazing sort of period images. He had done Tony, which is how he knew him, as a portrait of a Renaissance man holding a little carnation, and it is both perfectly a Renaissance picture and Tony. So for me, he cast me as a kind of cavalier. They're in pencil, but they look as though they are photographs. It was the most beautiful present.

Sir Gregory Doran will be speaking about his new book at the Cambridge Literary Festival on April 25. For tickets see their website. Gregory’s production of ‘Venus and Adonis’ will be touring the UK this June.