TP'S PALS: 2013

NORMAN RODWAY - 'NORMAN REMEMBERED'

Norman Rodway
(1929-2001)

"The other day I took down my copy of Who's Who in the Theatre, looked for the Rs and found 'RODWAY, Norman'. An impressive list of credits. Then Recreations; Friends, family, wine and Mozart. Club ... Gerry's.

I looked up at the point because I could swear I heard a familiar chuckle. A chuckle nicely described by Michael Pennington in his lovely piece in the Guardian last week. He put his finger too on the dichotomy in the essential Rodway. I quote: 'He had a conviction that everything was a form of comedy, including tragedy, but this red-blooded manner hid a spirit almost too delicate and fine'. I wish I'd written that.

He brought me to London in February 1963 to play Cranly opposite his Stephen D, releasing me from an eight-year incarceration in the Abbey Theatre. He took London by storm, moving Kenneth Tynan to remark, 'henceforth, Finney had better look to his laurels and O'Toole his Lawrence'. He had arrived in style.

I'll give you an example of Norman's sense of devilment. Michael Aspel was interviewing me for some radio station. The format required me to nominate two people who would speak highly about me at the top of the interview. I nominated Josephine Hart and Norman Rodway. Josephine said something sweet, if a bit fulsome. Then Norman spoke: I have known McKenna for thirty years. In fact, he was my lodger for a while. We called him 'Slippers', or the 'Muesli Man', the latter because of his habit of having a healthy breakfast of muesli, yoghurt and honey in the belief that this would offset the effects of the bottle of vodka he had the night before. This went out on air.

Norman joined the RSC here in Stratford in 1966. He had found his spiritual home. The next five years were, I believe, the happiest in his professional life. He loved the company spirit and he was now immersed in his beloved Shakespeare.

In a radio broadcast during that time he spoke movingly of the joys of driving out of Woodstock down the A34, Vivaldi's Four Seasons pouring from the radio, and the Oxfordshire countryside spread out before him, as he exclaimed, Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling, and a rich.*

He never lost his love for this part of England, nor his fierce loyalty to the compnay that would make him an Honorary Associate Member. I was not surprised when he moved to the Old Thatch in Lower Tadmarton. He was happy there, with his beloved Jane.

I saw him less often in later years, but the phone calls were frequent. 'Is your appalling father there, or is he still in his pit?' was a normal enquiry.

Norman was part of the furniture of my life for forty years, and will remain so, because as someone said, He may have left us, but I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."

(TP McKenna.)

TP was speaking at a Service of Commemoration held at the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon on Wednesday, 21st March 2001.

* The quotation is spoken by Falstaff in "Henry IV, Part II: Act 5, Scene 3" (Shakespeare)

COLIN BLAKELY: A RICH INNER SELF

Colin Blakely
(1930 - 1987)

"Colin Blakely was not just another fine actor; he was unique. He gave me more pleasure than any other actor of my generation. I never missed an opportunity to see him act; I was never disappointed, frequently elated.

An actor, like any other artist, cannot be judged only on the volume of his work but on the scale and grandeur of it. Titus Andronicus, Touchstone, Bottom, Kite in The Recruiting Officer, Philoctetes, Valpone, Tvold in The Dolls House, Astrov in Uncle Vanya, Captain Shotover in Heartbreak House,

Phil Hogan in A Moon for the Misbegotten, John Proctor in The Crucible, Captain Boyle in Juno, Deeley in Pinter's Old Times, Martin Dysart in Equus. These are but a few of the many acclaimed performances he gave at Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Court, the National Theatre, and in the West End of London. I haven't even touched on his film and television achievements.

Someone has said that acting is not imitation but revelation of the inner self. Colin would delve into that rich mine of himself and dredge up raw emotions, then shape them with a seamless technique into performances that are part of theatre history.

I was at the first night of Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval at the Lyric Theatre in which Colin played the lead role, one Dafydd ap. Llewellyn, a producer of amateur musicals. It was a rumbustious , energetic, athletic performance infused with a lovable, bemused innocence. I have rarely laughed more in the theatre. I could not know, nor did the audience suspect, that the actor they were watching was being ravaged by a virulent form of cancer and by the dreadful side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.

It was a performance I will never forget; the greatest feat of physical and spiritual heroism I have ever witnessed. He continued in that role for a further nine months and died two months after the play closed."

TP McKenna

(TP's tribute was written at the invitation of the Irish Times shortly after Colin's passing)

TONY DOYLE

Tony Doyle
(1942 - 2000)

TP was invited to join those making their eulogies for Tony Doyle at his memorial service held at St.Paul's Church, Covent Garden (The Actor's Church) on Tuesday 27th June 2000.

Tony's sudden death came as a terrible shock to all those who knew him, but all the more so for TP and his wife May who had been talking with him just hours before at a first-night performance of Krapp's Last Tape with John Hurt. (May actually knew Tony some years ahead of TP when they worked as assistants to Brendan Smith when he was producing one of the first Dublin Theatre Festivals).

Aside from being the finest of actors, not to say utterly professional and disciplined, he was a very charming and friendly man. The word charismatic would probably do him best justice.

While they worked together only sporadically they became firm friends and it was with delight that TP watched him expand and grow as an actor. It pleased him equally, to see the great successes that were finally to come Tony Doyle's way in a series of big, hit series including Between the Lines, Band of Gold and, of course, Ballykissangel.

However, TP in his address highlighted two particular triumphs that had made the greatest impression on him. First, his appearance in the Almedia Theatre's revival of Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert directed by Karel Reisz in 1992. This was a performance which, TP recalled, made him aware just how much Tony Doyle was 'a great actor', and secondly, how that impression was re-enforced when he took on the role of the tyrannical father in the television adaptation of John McGahern's Amongst Women.

For TP, this was a crowning performance and in tribute he recited the closing pages of McGahern's novel.