Primarily a stage actor of excellent grace, authority and a high quality baritone voice, James Laurenson, who has died aged 84 after struggling with Parkinson’s illness, was a well-recognized face on tv, stretching from a short-stay run because the Rev Peter Hope in Coronation Road in 1968 by means of to Sir John Weir, the doctor royal, in The Crown (2016).
He had arrived on a ship from New Zealand within the early Sixties – as many artists did from these islands, and Australia, at the moment – and by 1964 was treading the boards with the Royal Shakespeare Firm in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.
On the finish of the Sixties he joined the touring Prospect Theatre Firm of their 1969 go to to the Edinburgh competition, the place Ian McKellen turned an in a single day sensation taking part in each Shakespeare’s Richard II and Marlowe’s Edward II, a play not produced professionally at the moment for greater than 300 years.
In Edward II, Laurenson performed the king’s favorite, Piers Gaveston, who meets an premature finish (ultimately) from a viciously wielded red-hot poker. That adopted scenes of erotic depth, culminating in a passionate kiss with McKellen, who regarded the scene as a selected bonus for the competition run and an prolonged season of each performs on the Piccadilly theatre in London, buoyed by an ecstatically appreciative Harold Hobson within the Sunday Instances. The kiss was not notably remarked upon within the theatre (censorship had been abolished in 1968), however brought about a ripple of shock nationwide when the performs have been televised in 1970: the primary homosexual kiss on the field.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, after his first marriage broke up, Laurenson moved from London to Frome, in Somerset, and resumed a contented relationship with the RSC’s founding director, Sir Peter Corridor, who a lot admired his work in Corridor’s Indian summer time of seasons on the Theatre Royal, Bathtub.
Among the many beneficiant decide of high quality performances there, I might spotlight his wryly stoical Vladimir to Alan Dobie’s quietly resigned Estragon in Ready for Godot, among the finest revivals of that milestone play I’ve seen, directed by Corridor, who had staged the primary British manufacturing in 1955; and a delightfully hangdog Sir Peter Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s nice comedy The Faculty for Scandal, directed by Jamie Lloyd in 2012.
The Beckett transferred fortunately to the Ambassadors in London, the place Laurenson’s largest, splashiest West Finish position had been that of the producer Julian Marsh in Gower Champion’s well-known 1983 Broadway model of among the finest backstage films, forty second Road.
Restaged on the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, by Lucia Victor, one 12 months later, Marsh/Laurenson’s two most well-known traces didn’t zing with the Broadway pizazz of the unique (“Musical comedy – the best phrases within the English language!” is catnip on Broadway, much less so right here); and his imprecation to the abruptly elevated understudy, Peggy Sawyer, “You’re going to exit a teen, however you’ve gotta come again a star!”, was performed with an virtually rigorously inflected beseeching versus Jerry Orbach’s gargantuan, Shakespearean command.
Nonetheless, although he had no grounding in musical theatre, and couldn’t sing that effectively, Laurenson was praised by Michael Billington for conveying “the correct impression of a sober-suited Caligula regularly thawing right into a human being”.
He was born in Marton, on New Zealand’s north island, to Amy (nee Monk) and her husband, Stanley Laurenson, a seed salesman within the agricultural environs, and a lay Methodist preacher with a penchant for novice dramatics. James appeared at school performs at Marton district highschool earlier than additional creating his thespian tendencies on the College of Canterbury, in Christchurch, the place he was directed in a number of productions, together with the title position of Macbeth, by the crime novelist Ngaio Marsh; Marsh was, in impact, the inspiration and founding father of skilled theatre in New Zealand.
The transfer to Britain was propelled by profitable a grant from the New Zealand authorities to go to Lamda in London for a 12 months. He began out on the RSC as a messenger in Henry VI (David Warner because the king) in 1964 after which Guildenstern – Michael Williams was Rosencrantz – within the gamechanging Warner Hamlet of 1965.
He was Longaville in John Barton’s beautiful RSC 1965 manufacturing of Love’s Labour’s Misplaced and a captivating Orlando to Charlotte Cornwell’s Rosalind in a 1977 revival of As You Like It by Trevor Nunn; the Dauphin and the rabble-rouser Jack Cade within the Alan Howard Henry VI trilogy (1978), directed by Terry Arms; and a memorable Cassius – reverse Ben Kingsley’s Brutus – in a 1979 Julius Caesar.
He twice appeared in Hamlet, although not because the prince: he was a brisk and disarming Claudius within the Almeida manufacturing by Jonathan Kent on the Hackney Empire, with Ralph Fiennes and Francesca Annis in 1995; and a marvellous, uncommon double of the Ghost (mesmeric, quietly spoken) and the Participant King (relishing oratorial extravagance) in Nicholas Hytner’s 2010 Nationwide Theatre manufacturing with Rory Kinnear.
Different revivals of notice embody that of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Steadiness on the Haymarket in 1997, with Maggie Smith and Eileen Atkins, by which he and Annette Crosbie performed, fantastically, terror-struck neighbours looking for sanctuary; and a Donmar Warehouse 2000 revival of Peter Nichols’s Ardour Play, a coruscating comedy of adultery entwining two intersecting {couples} – Laurenson and Cherie Lunghi, and Martin Jarvis and Cheryl Campbell – with a disruptive catalyst performed by Nicola Walker. Michael Grandage’s manufacturing confirmed the trendy traditional standing of a compelling black comedy.
Laurenson’s movie profession didn’t embody any blockbusters, however he popped up usually after his debut in Ken Russell’s Ladies in Love (1969) as a minister. He had two respectable roles, in Sidney Hayers’ Assault (1971), by which he was a health care provider attending to rape victims who turns into a major suspect; and because the deceased father of Bob Geldof’s Pink in Alan Parker’s Pink Floyd – the Wall (1982), who revisits his sad childhood.
Different films included A Home within the Hills (1993) with Michael Madsen, the French/British crime movie Three Blind Mice (2003) with Edward Furlong and Emilia Fox, Lone Scherfig’s One Day (2011), scripted from his personal novel by David Nicholls, with Anne Hathaway and Patricia Clarkson, and Scherfig’s The Riot Membership (2014), written by Laura Wade – primarily based on her terrific play Posh, an expose of the Bullingdon personal membership in Oxford (dis)graced by David Cameron and Boris Johnson – with Sam Claflin and Max Irons as undergraduate tearaways in the end answerable to their school president, performed by a spoilsport authoritarian, Laurenson.
It was attention-grabbing that Laurenson, a form and affected person man, typically excelled at taking part in baddies. One in every of them was the glowering Friedrich, Elector of Brandenburg, in Heinrich von Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, directed by Neil Bartlett for the RSC and the Lyric Hammersmith in 2002. You wouldn’t need to cross him in that temper, or mode. He had the uncommon knack, although, of taking part in ugly within the nicest potential method.
Laurenson married the blissfully eccentric character actor Carol MacReady in 1970. They divorced in 1997, and he then married the artwork instructor Cari Haysom, who survives him alongside along with his son from the primary marriage, Jamie, a movie producer, and three grandchildren, Nancy, Connie and Stanley.
