'That sort of acting is seamless' … Janet Suzman in 1971. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images

Janet Suzman: how Paul Scofield's genius silenced a rehearsal studio

This article is more than 10 years old

I was Portia in Stratford one year when Paul walked in, dropped his coat and delivered a speech so masterful I would have played a grain of sand just to be in the same room as him

The Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1965. A vast company of actors. The great Paul Scofield in rehearsal for Timon of Athens. John Schlesinger directing; it was the year his film Darling was released. The Swan theatre was not yet built, and in that space was the so-called Conference Room, huge and entirely unused for conferences, but a great rehearsal space. A raised stage covered in cream canvas dominated the vast room, bearing a mockup of the set constructed out of scaffolding.

Ten o'clock in the morning – the start of another day. Actors sitting around clutching plastic cups of lousy coffee, bags littering the floor, coats flung over tubular chairs. This director was rather easygoing and didn't seem to mind a slow start to the day.

I was Portia that year and also one of Timon's whores, called Timandra – a forgettable character, but that was part of the ethos of the company: you did some big parts, you did some small parts, and that way you learned good. Frankly, I would have played a grain of sand just to be in the same room as Paul Scofield.

Because into this matutinal mess strode a figure through the far door, his corduroy jacket slung over his shoulder, his country brogues marking him out as a walker, his iron-grey hair gorgeously unkempt. He nodded to the director, busy talking to someone, then strode on to the mock stage, dropped his cord coat on the floor and started speaking: Timon's speech of endless invective outside the gates of Rome, after he has banished himself.

He did that speech five times in five completely different ways, his rich chocolate-truffle voice sinking and rising to different keys and rhythms, always tinged with his haunting minor-tones, like a soul in torment, his body dancing lightly like Muhammad Ali's. Or like a master gymnast swinging and looping away on the high rings, getting those emotional muscles to do his utmost bidding.

Paul Scofield, 1967. — Paul Scofield rehearsing his lines in 1967. Photograph: Jane Bown

Slowly, slowly, silence fell. The cups of coffee were stilled, resting in midair halfway to a dropped jaw. Heads swivelled around, eyes bugged. And in that silence, the invective accelerating in intensity, this master actor intoned this, with the utmost venom:

"Breath infect breath
That their society, as their friendship, may
Be merely poison."

On the word "poison" he threw back his leonine head and gave the last syllable a sort of wolf-howl. I tell you, it caught a note and the scaffolding sang with it. Rattled and sang. Completely uncanny. He cocked his head, silently listening to the echoes. Then he went on, eager to persuade the nastiest bunch of gods lolling on Olympus to:

"… grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
Amen."

That final "Amen" was rasped out in two separated syllables, the last way more vicious than the first.

Nobody moved a muscle. He picked up his dropped jacket, nodded to John, muttered "won't be a minute", like a schoolboy excusing himself, and strode off to the green room, I assume to get his own coffee.

As the door shut behind him, John Schlesinger, echoing the thoughts of all of us there that unforgettable morning, just whispered, "Fucking hell". There was nothing more to add.

I guess that's why actors love rehearsals: sometimes, rarely, you see a piece of genius at work that the audience will never see. And you can't learn a thing from it; that sort of acting is seamless. It's humbling.