My buddy Brian Phelan, who has died aged 90, was an actor turned playwright whose work was carried out on tv and on stage between the mid-Seventies and early-2000s.
Over that interval he produced works akin to Lady’s Property (1974) and Holding On (1977), each for LWT; The Russian Soldier (1986), directed by Gavin Millar for the BBC; Murphy’s Stroke (Thames Tv, 1980); Knockback (1987 for the BBC) and Coded Hostile for Granada in 1989.
His many stage performs included Article 5 (1975), The Signalman’s Apprentice (1974), which was maybe his finest identified creation, Paddy (1977) and Himself (1993), the final of which starred Timothy West on the Nuffield theatre in Southampton, the Theatre Royal in Tub and Richmond theatre, London.
Afterward, No Tears, which he wrote for RTÉ in 2002, gained one of the best miniseries award on the Monte Carlo tv competition.
Brian was born in Dublin to Micheal, a builder, and Theresa (nee Fogerty), a housewife. Educated by the Christian Brothers, Brian was apprenticed as a carpenter earlier than emigrating on the age of 18 together with his household to Canada, the place he started performing in theatre and tv.
In his early 20s he returned to Eire, and in 1956 landed his first notable stage function there on the Abbey theatre in Dublin, in Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow. Shifting to the UK shortly afterwards, he met the younger Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, leading to a long-lasting friendship, and appeared in Miss Julie on the Arts theatre, in addition to in quite a few movies, together with The Kitchen (1961), HMS Defiant (1962) and three motion pictures for Joseph Losey – The Legal (1960), The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967). I met Brian in London within the late 60s after I was working on the BBC, and we found that we had mutual associates and shared cultural pursuits.
Whereas nonetheless performing Brian delivered his first tv script to ATV – The Tormentors (1966) – which turned an ITV Play of the Week starring James Mason and Stanley Baker. Its success prompted him to show away from performing to focus on his writing.
Each in his work setting and outdoors, Brian was a person of nice loyalty and simpatico, and his many associates have been a significant a part of his life.
His first marriage, to Jan Heppell in 1960, led to divorce in 1964, and he spent the remainder of his life together with his accomplice, Dorothy Bromiley, an actor who predeceased him by only some days.
He’s survived by their daughter, Kate, and by Josh, Dorothy’s son from a earlier marriage.
