ANTHONY SHER never wanted to play Falstaff. The role was actually offered to Sir Ian McKellan, who has already lit up previous Royal Shakespeare Company seasons at Newcastle.

“This is my first Falstaff and not a part I would have dreamt of doing, not remotely. It’s been a real adventure into unknown territory,” says the actor who is the partner of the RSC’s artistic director Greg Doran – director of Henry IV Parts l and ll.

But Sher denies that this made him the automatic choice to take on Shakespeare’s boastful but lovable tavern bore. “Greg has tried to cast this particular part for years because it’s particularly difficult and for a couple of years we’ve played a game, over a meal or something, of trying to think of actors who could play Falstaff. We’d been through a great list and eventually he offered it to Ian McKellan. He didn’t want to do it and said to Greg, ‘You’re living with the guy who can do it’, because he’d seen me in Travelling Light at the National Theatre (which also toured to Newcastle) playing a larger than life person who could be called Falstaff ’s Jewish cousin.

Greg had genuinely never thought of this idea, in the same way that I’d never thought of it. So it’s all Ian McKellan’s fault,” he says.

“It took a lot of thought for me to believe that I could do it. It’s not just his physical appearance. It’s one of the great Shakespeare parts and Greg had to really convince me that he believed I could do it. So, it’s been a really exciting adventure,” says Sher, who hadn’t got Falstaff on his wishlist of roles.

However, becoming Falstaff meant that diminutive Sher had to gain a large amount of girth, and his feelings on the subject were just as challenging. “I don’t like the term fat suit and I banned it at rehearsal because it sounds like something that you can buy off the rack.

So, I call it Falstaff ’s body suit but I think that every actor who plays the part has to wear one because he has to be exceptionally fat and there are so many references in the script. It’s quite unusual in Shakespeare to be described as much as he is. So it’s part of what you do to take on the part,” he says.

Sher’s main worry was over making his head fit realistically on the padded body. The solution was to grow a beard, don a large wig to ensure that the width of his head fitted in a carefully designed way and followed a long period of trial and error.

“A good way to make these body suits work is to weight them so that they move like flesh and that means my moobs and belly are weighted so that it does become a heavy thing to carry around. When the armour goes on top for Part I, the weight is doubled and that means I have to sit down between scenes, but I have to point out that I’m limping because the character has gout,” he says.

Sher has been working on and off at the RSC since 1982 and says that Doran’s feelings about running the company is that he wants leading actors to play leading parts – “which hasn’t always been the case... that’s why he kicked off with Richard II played by David Tennant.

There wasn’t just a leading actor in the main part, but some in the supporting parts like Michael Pennington, Jane Lapotaire and Oliver Ford Davies. Greg has got Eileen Atkins coming to play at Stratford in a few months,” he says.

He points out that when the RSC was created it was an ensemble, but it was an ensemble led by Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Schofield. “The word ensemble doesn’t mean you can’t have a leading actor in it,” says Sher.

Far from being the man who the other cast members would take their lead from, Sher claims that he learned lessons from newcomer Alex Hassell who plays Hal in Parts l & ll. “He has a way of working that is a lot freer than me, and so for the big tavern scene where you have to have a sense of them playing as a kind of father and son it’s like a kind of improvisation. I learnt a lot about that from Alex who changed moves and things that happen. He has a great future as a classical actor,” he says.

“We had three months rehearsal for the two plays which gives you a lot of time to talk about things. But sometimes the best things happen in rehearsal. The scene where Hal rejects me happened like that. I have to bound forward full of excitement to give him a hug and he says ‘I know thee not old man’ because Falstaff is the lord of misrule and if the new king is going to be a good ruler he has to get rid of Falstaff,” he says.

Sher doesn’t see Falstaff as a coward but just an elderly man completely out of his depth on the field of battle.

“He’s a fat old man on the battlefield and will do anything to survive including playing dead at one point, but in the second half he’s confronted by a man with a sword and then he tries bluster and booming. Essentially, I wouldn’t call him brave in any way. He’s the opposite,” he says.

Sher recommends watching the Orson Welles film Chimes Of Midnight, which relates to Falstaff, to gain an insight into what actually happened on a battlefield. “It was like the hand-to-hand fighting in the mud of the First World War and some of the bleakest stuff is Falstaff ’s attitude to the wretched individuals he recruits as troops. The famous line is ‘Food for powder’ which means they are cannon fodder,” he says.

“The creation of Falstaff was extraordinary for the period it was written because it’s so modern because he’s the ultimate anti-hero.

No modern writer would create as outrageous a character as Falstaff.

“There are people fighting for their lives and Falstaff steps forward and says, ‘What is honour? Honour’s a worthless thing’.