#frank frayne

[handeaux]

Frank Frayne’s Fatal Shot Echoed Through The Decades In Over-The-Rhine

When Frank I. Frayne’s troupe rolled into Cincinnati back in 1882, there was scant indication that he would precipitate the darkest night in Cincinnati theater history.

Frayne managed an immense production bankrolled by New York impresario Harry Miner. It was really big. Frayne’s show was so big, it was advertised as a “combination.” That was a term the biggest circuses used to describe their organizations. The “circus” meant only the acts in the sawdust ring. Add a sideshow with various freaks and a traveling zoo and you had a combination. That’s what Frank Frayne brought to Cincinnati. An advertisement [28 November 1881] gives a fair inventory of Frayne’s traveling ensemble:

“During the week and Wednesday and Saturday Matinees, Harry Miner’s Frank I. Frayne Combination and Dramatic Artists, and the Wonderful Acting Dog Jack, the African Lion Emperor; also the two Performing Bears Bruno and Chio. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Wednesday Matinee, “Mardo, or, The Nihilists of St. Petersburg.” Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Saturday Matinee, “Si Slocum.”

One year later, in November 1882, Frayne was back in Cincinnati at the Coliseum Theater on Vine Street with the same two melodramas, but this time his menagerie was enlarged by the addition of a small pack of hyenas. Jack the Dog still got star billing. The Coliseum Theater up on Vine Street was the jewel in Hubert Heuck’s chain of theaters here and in various Midwest cities. It was formerly a beer garden but Heuck converted it into a theater and opera house at no small expense.

It appears that “Mardo” was Frayne’s personal adaptation of a play by Oscar Wilde, “Vera, or The Nihilists.” Frayne’s script has not survived, but the newspaper reviews suggest that it was a ton more exciting than Wilde’s drama. Here is the Enquirer [28 November 1882]:

“There are any amount of desperate actions, dastardly threats, fire scenes, murders, &c., and the lovers of this style of drama will see almost a lifetime of sensation in each act of “Mardo.” The dog Jack is a show in himself and acts his part with the best of the cast. During the play we see the Nubian lion, the ferocious hyenas and the wrestling bear, and these, together with a very passable cast, make it impossible for “Mardo” to be at all dull.”

Frank Frayne himself was fairly well known. He was a sharpshooter at a time when that was a popular stage act. Among his contemporaries and competitors were Annie Oakley and her mentor and husband, Frank Butler. Frayne found enormous success incorporating his rifle tricks into the context of various melodramas in which he portrayed heroic men of action forced to shoot their way out of diabolical predicaments.

Frayne’s second Cincinnati offering, “Si Slocum” was written especially for Frayne by Clifton Tayleure, a successful Broadway producer. The plot is inconsequential, but involves Frayne as Si Slocum, a poor but honest rancher whose lands are coveted by the nefarious scoundrel, Vasquez. It is doubtful that Tayleure envisioned all the zoological extravagances and sharpshooting folderol Frayne piled onto his script. In the course of five acts, Slocum kills a lion, gets rescued by his faithful hound, shoots a pipe out of a ranch-hand’s mouth, plugs a half-dozen playing cards, shoots a bear, scatters the stage with random crockery and saves his wife several times. Somehow, the hyenas made an appearance as well. This stuff sold tickets back then. The Coliseum’s 2,000 seats were occupied the entire week of Frayne’s residency.

The role of Slocum’s wife was played by 25-year-old Annie Von Behren, an up-and-coming actress who was at that time Frayne’s fiancée. Brooklyn-born Miss Von Behren had an extensive theatrical resume before she took on the role of Ruth Slocum. She was thoroughly familiar with the Coliseum Theater, having performed for a couple of years among the stock company of that venue. She later joined a traveling troupe that took her to New York, where she met the widowed Frank Frayne, joined his combination as leading lady and won his heart.

At a critical scene in “Si Slocum,” Vasquez has Slocum cornered, with a dozen bandits drawing a bead on him. Vasquez announces that he likes Slocum’s “pluck,” and offers to free Slocum and end their feud if Slocum can shoot an apple off his wife’s head, while facing backward and aiming the shot with a mirror. Frayne had performed this trick shot hundreds of times over the years.

For reasons never fully explained, Frayne’s trick shot failed, and he sent a bullet through Annie Von Behren’s brain. Frayne screamed in terror as he rushed to his fiancée’s side. The curtain dropped immediately as the audience sat in petrified silence. Theater manager James Fennessey sent H.M. Markham, the actor appearing as the villain Vasquez, to the front of the stage to calm the audience. Markham nervously informed the crowd that the dead Annie von Behren had sustained a slight injury and they should collect a refund on their way out the door.

The next day, Coroner John Rendigs conducted an inquest, at which Frayne appeared. Some witnesses claimed Frayne’s rifle malfunctioned and that, in particular, a screw broke as the gun fired, dropping the rifle barrel downward. Some suggested the cartridge was defective. Other witnesses questioned why Annie was not wearing a metal cap under her wig as she usually did. The coroner declared the death accidental, caused by a bullet fired without criminal intent. Frayne announced he would never return to the stage but did so within a year, reviving the role of Si Slocum. Soon after, he married a woman named Margaret Thompson, who wisely refused to go on stage in his act.

Another victim of the Frayne shooting was the Coliseum Theater itself. Robert Heuck, son of Coliseum owner Hubert Heuck, explained [Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio - Volume 20, No. 4, October 1962] that the theater had to be renamed as a result of public opinion.

“The court decision declaring [Frayne’s] innocence was not taken lightly by a great many people in Over-the-Rhine. The show was only closed November 30th and December 1st, however; the receipts for the 2nd and 3rd were light. The court decision was so unpopular that it was thought best to change the name of this new theatre. In fact, it was called just that, "New Theatre," for some time. In 1883, the name of the New Theatre between 12th and 13th on Vine was changed to Heuck's Opera House, and the former Heuck's Opera House at 13th and Vine was re-named ‘People's.’ Of course, it's confusing! Many accounts relating to actors and plays of those earlier show days are in error for lack of understanding of this gobble-de-gook.”

The rechristened Heuck’s was renamed again in 1930 when it became a movie theater known as the Rialto. The building was demolished and the site is today a parking lot.

[scribbledbyhand]

S5E47 ... Well ... Yes, it‘s hard, but this is RIPPER STREET and not a pony farm! ... My mum was not amused! She insisted to initiate a petition #savehieronymusthehamster!

[qapcake]

stuck in love (2013) // bad religion - frank ocean // One_thing_after_another on ifunny.co // letters, and why they’re all for you - chloë frayne // -c.p // jealousy, 1861 - petrus renier hubertus knarren// -t.l.c // abby

[dannyreviews]

Entertainment Legends Who Should Receive The Kennedy Center Honors (2020 Edition)

Another update on potential future honorees.

Actors:

Alan Alda, Jane Alexander, Michael Caine, Leslie Caron, Glenn Close, Billy Crystal, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Boyd Gaines, Joel Grey, Gene Hackman, Rosemary Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Glenda Jackson, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Nathan Lane, Jessica Lange, Elaine May, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Bob Newhart, Christopher Plummer,  Maggie Smith, Dean Stockwell, Dick Van Dyke, Denzel Washington, Betty White

Composers/Conductors:

John Adams, Daniel Barenboim, George Crumb, Carlisle Floyd, Valery Gergiev, Phillip Glass, John Corigliano, Dave Grusin, Mike Post, Simon Rattle, Steve Reich, Ned Rorem, Lalo Schifrin, Leonard Slatkin, La Monte Young, Hans Zimmer

Dancers/Choreographers:

Toni Basil, Savion Glover, Cynthia Gregory, Kenny Ortega, Susan Stroman, Tommy Tune

Directors:

Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Ivory, Norman Jewison

Musicians:

Herb Alpert, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Emanuel Ax, Burt Bacharach, Carla Bley, Yefim Bronfman, Larry Carlton, Ron Carter, Ry Cooder, Chick Correa, Stanley Drucker, Bela Fleck, James Galway, Evelyn Glennie, Keith Jarrett, Kim Kashkashian, Doug Kershaw, Ramsey Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Jean-Luc Ponty, Arturo Sandoval, Peter Schickele, Pinchas Zukerman

Singers:

ABBA, Paul Anka, Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Kathleen Battle, Betty Buckley, Shirley Caesar, José Carreras, Eric Clapton, Judy Collins, Phil Collins, Renee Fleming, Barry Gibb, Kiri Te Kanawa, Allison Krauss, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gladys Knight, Patti Lupone, Audra McDonald, Bette Midler, Sherrill Milnes, Liza Minnelli, Van Morrison, Bernadette Peters, Samuel Ramey, The Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Renata Scotto, Ringo Starr, Bryn Terfel, Frankie Valli, Frederica von Stade, Willard White

Theatrical People:

Emanuel Azenberg, Alain Boubil/Claude-Michel Schonberg, Peter Brook, Michael Frayn, Athol Fugard, David Hare, Sheldon Harnick, Bill Irwin, James Lapine, David Mamet, Terrence McNally, Alan Menken, Trevor Nunn, Tim Rice, Stephen Schwartz, Peter Sellars, Richard M. Sherman, Tom Stoppard, Charles Strouse, Jonathan Tunick, Jerry Zaks

[libidomechanica]

Untitled # 8647

This prece to my presume my shame,   as humour   such to herber þer hiȝed innoghe for an Eye to and fairer marriages, and lifeless faltered and no soon   was that in the flying closer or

farther I should be quite necks, which would shines like a little seed into a foreign buffoon stood upon the ancient loved me with þe hende. Þat oþer euer, hit gotz away with his quenche thyrsus, the grave where, two fyngeres þat wan watz wyth ful dere a foreigners can gain in grene as he sued.

“Does not be admitted the power to the watz sesed þe burde he watz stapled stay, Miss to Miss,   acquiesced with how I say þe, and soon or laid out the rest, a way the Desert undecyphers sank,   his course was a busk me now wol I dye, I haue frayned hit ful þinges as ȝe in þe stondes in your body as he theme for ardour mute,   the moth-time on my jolitee,   Well:”

  has divers be reserved, nor night that courteous, even to wynne is such the same he seyn, my life, and light, his task of Rhyme, or inanity? cacche whole your proffer his modern instance which are over to weldez nouþe; and answerd Elysium, or with our lowd desire; then stormy sea! Yet, that gentle warbling frame, and not have heart into a sharp rasores, þurȝe grace, and if they haten the tower,   are swear, nor nourish upon youth, and halde schene wyth joy thus theft: from either

the greene, and no lamentative. What many a light, and draws the ladi, þe last even now, as what to sette bisyde, as the lead his long green turnd for freedom! And schapes undone, and went to me to hear smell how sad steps: great Locke? While the lecture of þe better from the starve although foe to rend, and taller resembling roof         upon the Franks—                     the leaned   her royal blood be theres a sire. Safe with all her self-same ensample stimulation, which seem lose its deadly blaste. Go not the pluck thee steals into high Poet!

My stranger;  her mouths shes knowing the foure lorde hym þe schalk rides; and hendely, quen he rest, had led by age with stars: so threw a sunbows phrase by thy little you list nothing time must. Those, and move my heart is like night an heiress falters fall,   like a vast efforts without; but inflamd to be friends; I haue frayned hom to ryde, þe walls, for so compliments. Through blind woried men; but theirs is the possession of this maner thy pure large. “Leave the land, and yet bothe uppermost alone, by measures, and chafe,   the bonie Lass of Welcome, which of þe schal teches one this as an ell—and moaning, words come—falling in me.”

[quoteoftheweekblog]

QUOTE OF THE WEEK  4/5/20 - ANDREA LEVY   ‘ “Workers of the world unite - you have nothing to lose but your chains” ... ‘ (Levy, 2016, p.39).

Levy, A. (2016 [1996] ) ‘Never far from nowhere’. London: Tinder Press.

*****

HAPPY MAY DAY BANK HOLIDAY - WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE (THIS YEAR’S LOCAL ELECTIONS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO LOCKDOWN)

MAY DAY

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/184671208084/quote-of-the-week-6519-lars-mytting-all

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/173681404684/quote-of-the-week-7518-zadie-smith-not-from

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/160187731109/quote-of-the-week-1517-michael-frayn-round

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/143786836304/quote-of-the-week-2516-jenny-diski-it-is

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/118193488564/quote-of-the-week-4515-anthony-trollope

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/84910404854/quote-of-the-week-5514-f-scott-fitzgerald

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/49771629656/quote-of-the-week-6513-elizabeth-von-arnim

...

THANK YOU TO ALL KEY WORKERS (AND TO PLAYMOBIL FOR THEIR STAY HOME CHALLENGE)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1253261135660408834

CLICK ON THE LINK - IT’S CUTE

(AND THANK YOU BASINGSTOKE !?!? ... )

https://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/18409220.basingstoke-anti-lockdown-protest-know-far/ *****

STAYING IN WEEK 6

LAST WEEK I COULDN’T BE BOTHERED SO I STAYED IN BED ...

*****

I GOT 11 DAYS BEHIND WITH MY PAGE A DAY DIARY 

AND 6 BOOKS BEHIND WITH MY READING DIARY

***** HOWEVER I DID READ THE DIVINE

AND THEN WATCHED THE ENTIRE SERIES ON IPLAYER

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/apr/26/normal-people-review-sally-rooney-bbc-hulu

THANK YOU SOPHIE X

Butcher, S. (2020) ‘Normal people’. Instagram photograph (account unknown). 29 April.

*****

LOCKDOWN

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/616735209622290432/quote-of-the-week-27420-arthur-ransome-

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/615999130581549056/quote-of-the-week-20420-clive-cussler-

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/615538103995744256/quote-of-the-week-13420-frank-tallis-

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/614654810597228544/quote-of-the-week-6420-ann-

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/614030011172798464/quote-of-the-week-30320-charles-portis-i

***** ANDREA LEVY

https://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/183528037279/quote-of-the-week-18319-andrea-levy-

http://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/173228329774/quote-of-the-week-23418-andrea-levy-

http://quoteoftheweekblog.tumblr.com/post/78448828163/quote-of-the-week-3314-andrea-levy-every

*****

[rebelside]

Ripper Hogwarts

Under the cut for the rsrewatch sorting hat full results :D

Whitechapel Gryffindors: 

Rose Drake (nee Erskine)

Dr. Amelia Frayn, 

Det. Sgt. Frank Thatcher

Det. Constable Albert Flight

Whitechapel Hufflepuffs:

Bennet Drake

Ch. Insp. Fred Abberline

Deborah Goren

P.C. Dick Hobbs

Sgt. Donald Artherton

Bella Drake

Sgt. Drum Drummond

Nathaniel

Emily Reid

Whitechapel Slytherins:

Captain Homer Jackson

Susan Hart

Fred Best

Daniel Judge

Det. Insp. Jedediah Shine

Theodore Swift

Augustus Dove

Whitechapel Ravenclaws:

Det. Inspector Edmund Reid

Mimi Morton

Mathilda Reid

Jane Cobden

Ronald Capshaw

Though I must fulfil my duty/ and must quarter every year/ still I wonder whether sorting/ may not bring the end I fear/ And we must unite inside her/ or we'll crumble from within/ I have told you/ I have warned you.../ let the Sorting now begin.

And of course, those who didn’t make it

P.C. Bobby Grace 

Silas Duggan

[lipwak]

VHS #383

Zardoz, PHC (Prairie Home Companion) at Tanglewood, 7/2/06, The Human Hambone, one of The Highland Sessions, Peter Gabriel Live, Growing Up (Milan) 1st 45 min *** Zardoz1:471/25/? I am Arthur Frayn (https://youtu.be/ezT7P970Bw4) opening credits (https://youtu.be/he613E96E3E), vocal interpretation of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony after this during more credits.Microagressions in the year 2293 (https://youtu.be/Dx45tkBnj6I)I will not go to the 2nd level (https://youtu.be/eCsT_ocYDZ0) Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling have a tug of war (https://youtu.be/Y6yGL33LdnE) The end (https://youtu.be/MisPtPPwZNA) Beethoven's Seventh Symphony! *** PHC (Prairie Home Companion) at Tanglewood, 7/2/06Independence Day Special2 hrsGreat Performancestaped 7/1/06some audio static... Hear the whole thing here: https://www.prairiehome.org/shows/57163.html w/ Hopeful Gospel Quartet, Jearlyn Steele, Meryl Streep, Wailin’ Jennys, Carol Elizabeth Jones (in Hopeful Gospel Quartet), Erica Rhodes? Pat Donohue, Andy Stein intro theme, It’s a good country, I remember…, tethered to our cell phones,  Hopeful Gospel Quartet - One Love, Meryl, I’m On My Way, True Stories From Scripture - The Prodigal Daughter, Hey Judea (Hey Jude),  Jearlyn Steele - How I Got Over (https://youtu.be/Ld34Ws05fJg) Not this clip, What A Beautiful City, Powdermilk Biscuits theme and other kids songs, Pat Donohue - I’m Gonna Get Me A Jazz Name, Garrison remembers Tanglewood with Fred Newman’s sfx, Wailin’ Jennys - Bring Me Li'l' Water Silvy, One Voice, Guy Noir at Tanglewood, break, Pat Donohue/Andy Stein/Rich Dworsky/the band - familiar Southern tune, 2nd half, Hopeful Gospel Quartet - All I’m Thinkin’ About (Springsteen), Frank Ghery melon baller, Hopeful Gospel Quartet - I Couldn’t Keep It To Myself, celebrating American poetry here, Riding Lesson - Henry Taylor, Wild Geese - Mary Oliver, Hoeing - John Updike, What I Learned From My Mother - Julia Kasdorf, Wailin’ Jennys - Calling All Angels, News From Lake Wobegone - 4th of July!, Jearlyn Steele w/ The Hopeful Gospel Quartet -  I Shall Be Released,  Bebop a rebop Rhubarb Pie  - Lobster w/ Fred Newman, Meryl and Garrison sing What'll I Do, all sing - America The Beautiful (3 verses), closing music (not the music listed below) Rundown from their site: Segment 1 00:00:00 Logo 00:00:15 GK intros - Happy Birthday America! 00:01:51 Tishomingo Blues 00:03:38 GK reminisces about America 00:08:46 "One Love" - Hopeful Gospel Quartet and Guy's All-Star Shoe Band 00:11:30 GK talks with Meryl Streep 00:13:23 Mother Script 00:24:47 "How I Got Over" - Jearlyn Steele, Shoes 00:28:20 "Twelve Gates To The City" - Jearlyn Steele, Hopeful Gospel Quartet, Shoes 00:31:03 Powdermilk Biscuit Theme Break including "Horses Stood Around", "Pigs in a Blanket", "Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends", and "Dogfight" - Hopefuls, Shoes Segment 2 00:33:40 "Jazz Names" - Pat Donohue and the Shoes 00:37:30 SFX Script 00:42:37 GK Intros The Wailin' Jennys 00:43:02 "Bring Me A Little Water Sylvie" - The Wailin' Jennys 00:46:13 GK Talks about The Wailin' Jennys 00:46:37 "One Voice" - The Wailin' Jennys 00:50:18 Guy Noir Script 01:05:06 Intermission - "Dr. Jazz" - Guy's All-Star Shoe Band Segment 3 01:09:04 GK Welcomes Back 01:09:30 "All I'm Thinkin' About is You" - Hopeful Gospel Quartet and the Shoes 01:12:54 Gehry Script 01:13:50 "Green Summertime" - Hopefuls with Rich Dworsky and Gary Raynor 01:17:57 Poems - GK, Meryl Streep, Andy Stein 01:28:45 "Calling All Angels" - Wailin' Jennys Segment 4 01:34:27 The News from Lake Wobegon Segment 5 01:46:32 GK Intros Jearlyn Steele 01:46:47 "I Shall Be Released" - Jearlyn Steele, Hopefuls, Shoes 01:50:20 Lobster Script 01:53:19 "What'll I Do" - Meryl Streep, GK, and Richard Dworsky 01:56:27 Credits 01:57:25 CLOSER - "Goodnight Ladies" into "Waitin' for You"- Hopefuls Gospel Quartet, Wailin' Jennys, Shoes *** The Human Hambone 1 hrstepping too7/18/06Link TV Opening sequence: https://vimeo.com/178736359 rhythms in personal relationships, music invented us, William Tell Overture, hambone, talking drum, Guy Davis, Pattin’ Juba, Hambone - Red Saunders (https://youtu.be/kEsrih2Ua2M), Stepping!, DC Coalition Step Team of Howard University, gumboot dance of South Africa, tap dancing, kids with tin lids on their sneakers dancing on the street, Jimmy Slyde, spoons, beatbox. *** The Highland Sessionsvarious celtic including Mary Black, Karan Casey52 minrecorded 8/4/?LinkTV See the whole thing here! https://youtu.be/qSZLVHRDLHsSteve Cooney & Allan MacDonald featured in the title. Mary Ann KennedyAllan MacDonald, Mick O’Brien, Mary Ann Kennedy, Rona Lightfoot - O'Donnell's Return/O'Neill's Cavalcade/Siud Mar Chaigh An Cal A DholaithMuireann Nic Amhlaoibh - An Spealadóir (The Scytheman)Dermot Byrne - Bunker HillKaren Matheson - Chuir m'Athair Mise Dha'n Taigh Charraideach (My Father Sent Me to the House of Sorrow), incorporating Seudan a'Chuain (Jewels of the Ocean)Liam Ó Maonlaí - Sadhbh Ní BhruinneallaighMary Black - Song - Óro Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile (Welcome Home) familiarKaran Casey - Buile Mo Chroí (Beat of My Heart) familiarMargaret Stewart  - O's Tu's Gura Tu th'air a'Aire (You're the One That's On My Mind)Mick O'Brien & Caoimhin O Raghallaigh - The Temptation ReelPadraigin Ni Uallachain  - Ealaigh Liom (Elope With Me)iarla O Lionaird - LCaoineadh na dTrí Muire (The Lament of the Three Marys)The House Band - Failte gu baile Ghráinne (Welcome Home Grainne)Mary Black, Karan Casey, Mary Ann Kennedy, Allan MacDonald, Karen Matheson & Iarla O Lionaird -  Mo Ghile Mear (My Dashing Darling) familiar *** Peter Gabriel Live, Growing Up (Milan)1st 45 min. From Downside Up on is also on VHS #375. See the whole thing here: https://youtu.be/RM7ybJaCQK0 Here Comes the Flood Red RainSecret World - giant egg descendsDownside Up - Melanie singsGrowing Up - Peter inside the huge clear plastic bubbleSolsbury Hill - rides bicycleSledgehammer - Peter in lit dot suitSignal to Noise In Your Eyes - w/  Sevara Nazarkhan!

[kenyonexeter-blog]

The Dangers of Memory

Going abroad for a semester is like an extended vacation full of sweet moments. But going abroad for a year is to live in another country, replete with a lifetime of memories. As three months becomes six, which then becomes ten, the memories begin to overwhelm and there comes a moment of necessity for tools to remember. An easy solution might be to take photos. There are even new cameras like the “Narrative Clip” that clip onto your shirt and take photos every thirty seconds. While this may seem like an easy solution to the problem of memory, it has its downside.

Recent research by Linda Henkel, out of Fairfield University, noted that taking photos actually impairs the ability to remember. In this study, those who took photos in a visit to an art museum remembered fewer paintings and fewer details about each painting. With this in mind, I set out on the year with a different idea, I decided to catalog my travels through postcards. Instead of having direct visual references of experiences, I wanted to have mementos that let me do the recollecting. Here are a few of my memories paired with the postcards shown in the photo above:

1. When I was a child my family (parents and brother) lived in London for a year while my parents were on sabbatical. Everyone loves to recall the many travels from that year—everyone except me. Since I was but two, I can’t recall the year. One thing that did last, however, was a passion for Arsenal FC passed onto my brother and I by our lovely neighbors, Leslie and Pat. Leslie was been a lifetime Arsenal fan, and through their boundless friendliness, now are my brother and I. When I learned I was coming for the year, going to an Arsenal match seemed to be fate. Having signed up for a membership to purchase tickets, this postcard was sent with the packet entitled “Welcome to the Family.” The match I went to was against their rivals Chelsea, and the team that now surely will win the league (boo!). The outcome was a whopping victory for Arsenal, 3-0, an ethereal sign on a day that marks the closest I’ll ever get to religion.

2. Ever since my brother went to college in 2010, my family had not been on a vacation. The last family vacation I can remember, both my Grandmother, now eighty-five, and I got swine flu in Mexico. This time around, over winter break, my family came, even my brother and grandma, and we all spent a week in London. My grandmother declared the theme of the trip, repeating that this would be her last time in London—My Last This, My Last That. Despite her amazing health, it’s been her theme for the past five years. After going to the Tate, where I collected the postcard of this lovely old couple, we decided to visit Leslie and Pat. On arrival, we heard the unfortunate news that Leslie passed away in August of that year. Pat, in bittersweet tears, told my brother and I that Leslie would have been overjoyed to hear the passion we now have for Arsenal. He watched every game until the day he died.

3. The last postcard is not a postcard but a letter given to me by a dear friend. In my senior year of high school, after four years of much theatre, I put on a play I had written. After that, I ceased to be involved in theatre. I decided literature was what I wanted to study and that was that. The first two years of college I focused on my writing skills and how to analyze a text. Having poured my heart and soul into it, I felt I had improved but I was not sure where I wanted to go with it. As part of the Kenyon-Exeter Program, I had the privilege of seeing almost 40 professional theater pieces over 10 months. This reminded me of my love for theatre. I found that my passion for theater and literature were two in the same. The spring semester in Exeter, after almost three years, I auditioned and accepted a role in Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, noted by Frank Rich, an American essayist, as “the funniest play ever written.” Being a part of that production was a highlight of my year at the University of Exeter.

[trendingnewsb]

Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

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[twoontheaisle]

“Noises Off” at SF Playhouse

I take my responsibility to you, my readers, very seriously. Tickets – even at smaller theatre companies – aren’t cheap. Nor should they be, given the resources (both human and financial) required to put a show on stage, night after night, so that we in the audience can enjoy a performance as a unique experience, just for us. This is why I want you to be able to count on me for an honest appraisal of the work I see. I want to guide you to the very best return on your theatre investment. Think of it as my critical/fiduciary duty to you.

Which is why this review of Noises Off at SF Playhouse is a challenge for me. The play, first performed in 1982, ran for five years in the West End, spent more than a year on Broadway, won several awards, and has become a staple of theaters around the world. Frank Rich of the New York Times called it “the funniest play written in my lifetime.” This production, directed by the very talented Susi Damilano, is excellent in every respect. She has assembled a marvelously-talented cast, put them on an impressive set (designed by George Maxwell), and wrung from them every drop of physical comedy in their lithe (or not so) bodies. (There is a falling down the stairs moment in act three that is perhaps the single most impressive bit of stage stunt work I have ever seen, and which generated spontaneous applause from the audience.)

Which leads me to the challenge: I loathed the play. I’d never seen it, and was looking forward to a couple of hours of silly fun. There are some people who simply don’t like farce or slapstick humor. That’s not me: I thought Boeing-Boeing (especially the version I saw on Broadway with Mark Rylance) was hysterical, and I laughed until my cheeks cramped at One Man, Two Guvnors. But with Noises Off, I feel as if I am trapped in some alternate reality. The humor is often insipid, utilizing the most juvenile of sexual double-entendres to elicit laughs. And though some of the characters are cleverly-written (I’m especially fond of Gary, who can never seem to complete a metaphor, yet expects everyone to understand when he says “you know?”), their relationships and motivations are never clear enough, which undercuts the humor.

Noises Off concerns a second-rate theatre company that is putting on a slamming doors sex farce called “Nothing On.” Act one takes place at the last rehearsal, just a few hours before opening night – and nothing is going right. The director (played with a marvelously snotty imperiousness by Johnny Moreno), is still making changes – take the sardines, leave the sardines? – and his cast is proving to be of little help. Dotty can’t remember the directions, Frederick is prone to nosebleeds, and Selsdon is nowhere to be found, off searching for a hidden bottle of whiskey.

One of the problems with Noises Off is that the play-within-the-play is a rather awful bit of writing. I think that’s supposed to be part of the humor – a second-rate theatre company staging a third-rate play – but the problem is we have to sit through it (or parts of it) three times, as the three acts of Noises Off represent dress rehearsal, opening night, and a performance near the end of the run. The core premise of the play is actually quite cunning: we see the set of Nothing On in act one, but in act two the whole thing spins and we see the same performance we just saw, only this time from backstage. If only Nothing On were actually worth watching, even once.

Damilano and her ensemble deserve high marks for their work. Kimberly Richards is wonderful as aging TV star Dotty Otley, and Monique Hafen (who did such stellar work in SF Playhouse’s production of Company) elicits gales of laughter from the audience with her hysterical take on very, very bad actress Brooke Ashton. No, the cast is not at fault here. Nor is the director, or the set designer or costume designer or sound designer – or anyone else associated with the production. Which leaves my accusing finger pointing in one direction – at writer Michael Frayn.

I left the theater wondering how I can be so far out of the mainstream in despising a show that is so well-loved and so often produced. (Though judging from some faces I saw in the audience, there were a few others who had similar reactions to mine.) What came to mind is the placebo effect, where a patient’s health will sometimes improve after taking a sugar pill they are told is powerful treatment, simply because they believe it will help. If laughter is the best medicine, perhaps all those people roaring at Noises Off come to the theater believing people like Frank Rich, and allow their expectations to become their experience. 

But hey - if a placebo works, there’s no reason not to take it.

Noises Off is playing through May 13 at SF Playhouse, 450 Post Street, San Francisco. Performances are Tuesday-Thursday at 7:00pm, Friday-Saturday at 8:00pm, with 2:00pm matinees Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $35-$100, available at www.sfplayhouse.org or by calling the box office at 415-677-9596.

[scribbledbyhand]

S4E15

[dannyreviews]

Entertainment Legends Who Should Receive The Kennedy Center Honors (2018 Edition)

Here is an update of the list that I did last year. I’m putting in new names and taking off those that have since passed away. I will update periodically.

Actors:

Alan Alda, Jane Alexander, Michael Caine, Zoe Caldwell, Leslie Caron, Diahann Carroll, Glenn Close, Billy Crystal, Daniel Day-Lewis, Olivia de Havilland, Judi Dench, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford, Boyd Gaines, Joel Grey, Gene Hackman, Rosemary Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Glenda Jackson, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Nathan Lane, Jessica Lange, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Carl Reiner, Maggie Smith, Dean Stockwell, Dick Van Dyke, Denzel Washington, Betty White

Composers/Conductors:

John Adams, Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Phillip Glass, John Corigliano, Dave Grusin, Gershon Kingsley, Francis Lai, Michel Legrand, Johnny Mandel, Ennio Morricone, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mike Post, Simon Rattle, Steve Reich, Lalo Schifrin, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson-Thomas, La Monte Young, Hans Zimmer

Dancers/Choreographers:

Toni Basil, Savion Glover, Cynthia Gregory, Kenny Ortega, Susan Stroman, Tommy Tune

Directors:

Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Donen, Ron Howard, James Ivory, Norman Jewison, Franco Zefferelli

Musicians:

Herb Alpert, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Emanuel Ax, Burt Bacharach, Yefim Bronfman, Larry Carlton, Ron Carter, Ry Cooder, Chick Correa, Stanley Drucker, Bela Fleck, James Galway, Evelyn Glennie, Jimmy Heath, Keith Jarrett, Kim Kashkashian, Wynton Marsalis, Jean-Luc Ponty, Arturo Sandoval, Peter Schickele, Wayne Shorter, Pinchas Zukerman

Singers:

ABBA, Paul Anka, Charles Aznavour, Janet Baker, Cecilia Bartoli, Kathleen Battle, Shirley Caesar, José Carreras, Carol Channing, Eric Clapton, Judy Collins, Phil Collins, Renee Fleming, Barry Gibb, Kiri Te Kanawa, Allison Krauss, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gladys Knight, Little Richard, Patti Lupone, Audra McDonald, Bette Midler, Sherrill Milnes, Liza Minnelli, Van Morrison, Bernadette Peters, Samuel Ramey, The Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Renata Scotto, Bryn Terfel, Frankie Valli, Frederica von Stade, Willard White

Theatrical People:

Emanuel Azenberg, Alain Boubil/Claude-Michel Schonberg, Peter Brook, Michael Frayn, Athol Fugard, David Hare, Sheldon Harnick, Bill Irwin, James Lapine, David Mamet, Terrence McNally, Alan Menken, Trevor Nunn, Tim Rice, Stephen Schwartz, Peter Sellars, Tom Stoppard, Charles Strouse, Jonathan Tunick, Jerry Zaks

[rebelside]

RSRewatch Sunday 19th of March

Where: https://tlk.io/ripperstreet for the live-chat

3x04 - Your father, my friend

09.00 pm GMT - 10.00 pm GMT

PS: As to avoid problems with the change of the time I will post some countdowns tomorrow through the day so we can align better :)

What to bring: A better sense of self-preservation for Mathilda and a first-aid kit for Reid. Would also be nice to have some ice cream at ready :)

PPS: As we didn’t finish the sorting hat game last time we can continue with it tomorrow. From the list we still have to sort:

Frank Thatcher  

Augustus Dove

Emily Reid 

Cobden

Bella Drake

Silas Duggan

Theodore Swift

Amelia Frayn

Ronald Capshaw

Daniel Judge

if you want to add more characters feel free to tell me, here’s who’s already been sorted: Reid, Jackson, Drake, Best, Susan, Rose, Abberline, Atherton, Mathilda, Goren, Mimi, Shine, Flight, Grace, Hobbs and Drummond.

See you tomorrow folks!

[trendingnewsb]

Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2oeJXQH

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2qlHrJk via Viral News HQ

[ronique]

Lol!

S4E15