In a soulless, drafty rehearsal hall just around the corner from Euston Station, Roy Dotrice is doing a reading as John Aubrey under the watchful eye of the director Patrick Garland. The bitchy 17th-century writer and antiquarian is a character that both men have come to know very well over years.
The relationship began in 1967 when Brief Lives — Garland’s adaptation of The Memoirs, Miscellanies, Letters and Jottings of John Aubrey — was first staged at the Hampstead Theatre. On the West End, Broadway and around the world, Dotrice went on to play Aubrey for more than 1,700 performances which still warrants a mention in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest-running one-man show. Now these two old stagers — Garland is 72 and Dotrice is, unbelievably, 84 — are about to reprise the play with a run that will open at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester on 7 February and end, they hope, in the West End.
Dotrice, dressed in jeans, a Garrick tie and a blazer, is struggling with a gruesome cough, but as I arrive he delivers the play’s final words in a gentle, affecting but understated way. This production is important to him. Scarcely six months ago, his beloved wife Kay died suddenly of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 78. They had been married for more than 60 years and it had, says Dotrice, been Kay’s express wish that he should do the play.
‘I’d never agree to do anything without talking to her about it first. She was a great actress herself and always knew instinctively how parts should be played. I’d started reading Aubrey through with her not long before she died. She felt I had become far too hammy in the part by the time I did my final performances in the role in 1974.
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