Eagle-eyed aficionados of the 1964 struggle movie epic Zulu will recall the actor David Kernan within the position of Personal Frederick Hitch, one of many British troopers efficiently defending Rorke’s Drift hospital and storehouse in the course of the Nineteenth-century Anglo-Zulu struggle.
“How can I shoot them if I can’t see them?” Kernan says as he mounts the ramparts. Moments later his character suffers a bullet-wound, however nonetheless manages to maintain communication with the hospital open and provide ammunition to his comrades, the actions which earned Hitch a Victoria Cross.
However Kernan, who has died aged 85 after affected by Alzheimer’s illness, devoted most of his profession to musical theatre, gaining a status as Britain’s main interpreter of the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim’s songs.
He first shone in Sondheim as Rely Carl-Magnus Malcolm in A Little Night time Music on the Adelphi theatre (1975-76). Jean Simmons was the star, contemporary from a US tour of the manufacturing, portraying an itinerant actor reviving love with an outdated flame, performed by Joss Ackland. The present, a romantic story impressed by the director Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 movie Smiles of a Summer season Night time, repeated its Broadway success.
Kernan had been requested by Cleo Laine and Johnny Dankworth to place collectively a revue for his or her Stables theatre in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire, and, shocked by Sondheim’s music and lyrics, he had the thought of making a present of his songs that had not beforehand been carried out dwell in Britain.
After consulting Sondheim, Kernan sought assist from the broadcaster Ned Sherrin, producer of the 60s satirical TV sequence That Was the Week That Was, through which Kernan had carried out topical songs. They recruited Millicent Martin, who had additionally appeared on the programme, and Julia McKenzie, and in 1975 staged The Sondheim Songbook, with numbers from exhibits equivalent to West Facet Story, Gypsy, A Humorous Factor Occurred on the Method to the Discussion board, Firm and Follies, some written collectively with different composers.
With a brand new title, Facet by Facet by Sondheim (recommended by McKenzie), the present was produced by Cameron Waterproof coat within the West Finish the next yr, on the Mermaid theatre, then Wyndham’s, after which on the Garrick, the place it ran for 806 performances, persevering with with different artists till 1978. Kernan, Sherrin, Martin and McKenzie left the London manufacturing in 1977 to take the present to Broadway, with particular dispensation from the US actors’ union, Fairness. All 4 earned Tony award nominations, earlier than once more giving solution to others.
Clive Barnes wrote within the New York Instances: “Mr Kernan is all appeal and polish, with a gleaming wit, and, like his well-matched ladies, shows an amazing sense of enjoyable, and, sometimes, a really feel for dreamily poetic ardour.”
Kernan organised different Sondheim compilation exhibits, together with Transferring On (Bridewell theatre, 2000), and have become a patron of the Stephen Sondheim Society, shaped in 1993, giving priceless recommendation to performers in its workshops.
He was born in East Ham, London, to Lily (nee Russell) and Joseph Kernan, an underground prepare driver. His father walked out shortly after his beginning and, from the age of 4 to 14, Kernan lived along with his grandmother in Oxford, the place he was head chorister on the College Church of St Mary the Virgin. “I used to be a relatively fats, plain baby,” he recalled, “however I had a really fairly soprano voice.”
Aged 15, he left Portchester college, Bournemouth, educated as a chef and carried out with the native Shakespeare Gamers. He then labored as a store assistant in London earlier than breaking into repertory theatre as an assistant stage supervisor and actor on the Theatre Royal, Huddersfield (1957).
After his West Finish debut, within the refrain of The place’s Charley?, starring Norman Knowledge, on the Palace theatre (1958-59), he spent a few of his earnings on singing, dancing and performing classes.
His vocal skills have been demonstrated on tv with Millicent Martin within the BBC present affairs sequence Tonight. Sherrin, one among its producers, then took the pair to That Was the Week That Was. “I believe Ned needed a mixture of Oxbridge sorts and showbiz individuals, so he introduced us in to lighten issues up,” Kernan instructed the Stage. “It was an odd combine, however it labored.”
He returned to musicals because the Hon Ernest Woolley in Our Man Crichton (Shaftesbury theatre, 1964-65) and was again within the West Finish to play Edward Rutledge, a US founding father, in 1776 (on the New theatre, now the Noël Coward, 1970). He was within the revue This Factor Referred to as Love (Ambassadors theatre, 1983) and performed the Ken Livingstone character, chief of the Better London council, in Sherrin’s political satire The Ratepayers’ Iolanthe, with Gilbert & Sullivan songs, on the Queen Elizabeth Corridor in 1984.
Kernan stored creating his personal revues even after the type went out of trend. He conceived and directed Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood in 1986, taking it from the Donmar Warehouse in London to Broadway. In 1994, he devised a celebration of Noël Coward and Cole Porter, Noel/Cole – Let’s Do It, on the Oxford Playhouse, then the Chichester Pageant theatre. Later got here Dorothy Fields Endlessly (2002), concerning the American lyricist, co-created with Eden Phillips and carried out on the Jermyn Avenue and King’s Head theatres.
On tv, he was a daily featured singer in On the Vibrant Facet (1959-60), a satirical sketch present starring Stanley Baxter which they took to the stage as On the Brighter Facet on the Phoenix theatre in 1961. Kernan additionally appeared in Upstairs Downstairs, as a military captain who has an affair with Woman Marjorie (Rachel Gurney) in 1971, and his uncommon movie roles included a troubadour in Up the Chastity Belt and a holidaymaker in Carry On Overseas (each 1972).
His autobiography, From East Ham to Broadway, was revealed in 2019.
Kernan is survived by his husband, Stuart Forsyth, whom he married in 2014 following a civil partnership in 2008.
