International Concert Attractions & Duncan C Weldon & Paul Elliott for Triumph Proscenium Productions present
THE HOLLOW CROWN
DEREK JACOBI
Derek Jacobi began acting whilst still at school and, as an undergraduate at Cambridge University reading for a history degree. He kept on acting.
After Cambridge he spent two and a half years at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, and in the summer of 1963 he joined the company of Laurence Olivier’s summer festival at Chichester; a company which in the October of that year was to become the National Theatre, based at the Old Vic, where Derek stayed for the next eight years.
During the seventies there followed a long association with the classical touring company, Prospect Theatre, led by Toby Robertson. His Broadway debut followed in 1980 in The Suicide.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982, where he appeared for the next three years as Prospero in The Tempest, as Peer Gynt, and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing and as Cyrano de Bergerac, the last two also transferring to Broadway.
On his return, Hugh Whitemore’s play about Alan Turing, Breaking the Code, returned him first to the London stage then once again to Broadway. In April 1988 he began to work on another debut – that of director, for the Renaissance Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh. In late 1988 he appeared at the Phoenix Theatre playing the title roles in a repertory season of Richard II and Richard III. In 1990 he played the title role in Kean, directed by Sam Mendes at the Old Vic, subsequently transferring to Toronto. More recently he played the title roles in Becket at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hadrian VII at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Uncle Vanya at Chichester Festival Theatre, in the West End of London and on Broadway.
Television work includes Man of Straw, Budgie, The Strauss Family, The Pallisers, I Claudius, Philby Burgess And Maclean, Richard II, Skin, Hamlet, The Stranger Left No Card, My Pye, In My Defence, The Vision Thing, Wolves Are Howling, Cadfael, Breaking The Code, Witness Against Hitler. The Wyvern Mystery, Frasier, The Jury.
Films: The Day Of The Jackal, Blue Blood, The Odessa File, The Medusa Touch, The Human Factor, Charlotte, The Man Who Went Out In Smoke, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Inside The Third Reich, Othello, Little Dorrit, The Tenth Man, Henry V, The Fool, Dead Again, Hamlet, Love Is The Devil, Up At The Villa, Father Damien, Gladiator, Gosford Park, A Lonely War, Two Men Went To War, The Revenger’s Tragedy.
He was knighted in the 1994 New Year’s Honours.
DONALD SINDEN
Donald Sinden, as well as being a distinguished actor with a string of successes in both the classical and commercial theatre, is an author of some note, whose works include two volumes of best selling autobiography - A Touch of the Memoirs and Laughter in the Second Act.
He first appeared on the stage in 1942 and his extensive theatre work includes:
In London’s West End: The Heiress, Odd Man in Guilty Party, There’s a Girl in my Soup, Not Now Darling, London Assurance, In Praise of Love, Shut Your Eyes and Think of England, Present Laughter, Shut Your Eyes and Think of England, Present Laughter, Uncle Vanya, The School for Scandal, Two Into One, Over My Dead Body, Oscar Wilde, Out of Order, She Stoops to Conquer, Hamlet for the Peter Hall Company and Ariadne on Naxos for the English National Opera and most recently Quartet at the Albery Theatre.
For the RSC: Romeo & Juliet, Henry VI, Lord Foppington in The Relapse, Malvolio in Twelfth Night (tour of Australia in 1970) Henry in Henry VIII, Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, Lear in King Lear (two Actor of theYear awards), Othello in Othello.
At the Chichester Festival Theatre: An Enemy of the People, Scarlet Pimpernel, Major Barbara and Venus Observed.
On Broadway: London Assurance and Habeas Corpus.
Television work includes Our Man from St Mark’s, The Rivals, Two’s Company, Never the Twain, Nancherrow and Judge John Deed.
Films include The Cruel Sea, Mogambo, Doctor In the House, Decline and Fall, The Day of the Jackal, The National Health and The Island at the Top of the World.
DIANA RIGG
Diana Rigg was born in Yorkshire and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon in 1959 and made her mark shortly thereafter in productions of The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth and King Lear.
At the end of the RSC contract in late 1964 she auditioned and got the role of Emma Peel in The Avengers, a part which was to make her an icon on British television and was to win her two Emmy Award nominations as Best Actress in a Dramatic Series in 1967 and 1968 when the series was shown on US television. Following her year-long stint as Emma Peel she joined the National Theatre where she played Dottie in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, Celimene in The Misanthrope, Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, and Phaedra in Phaedra Britannica. The first of her many West End appearances was as Heloise in Abelard And Helouise which was a critical and popular success both in London and on Broadway and for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Dramatic Play. She also starred in Tom Stoppard's Night and Day, Antony and Cleopatra, Stephen Sondheim's Follies, and won a Tony Award in 1994 for her Broadway performance in the title role of Medea, having already won the London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for the same production. She was most recently seen at the Royal National Theatre in Humble Boy.
Her many film credits include: The Hospital, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Little Night Music, Evil Under the Sun and A Good Man in Africa.
Amongst her many television credits are Hedda Gabler, Witness for the Prosecution, Bleak House, Mother Love and played Regan to Laurence Olivier’s highly acclaimed King Lear. She also starred as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1997), a performance that earned her the 1997 Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series. She recently finished filming four new installments of The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries.
Diana Rigg has edited two books: "No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews" and "So to the Land," a collection of English country lyric poetry. She is an avid angler and when not acting or angling, she likes to walk in the countryside, to write and to read.
In 1988, she was made a CBE and in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 1994, was a made a Dame.
IAN RICHARDSON C B E
Born Edinburgh, Scotland 1934 to John and Margaret (Drummond) Richardson. Married Maroussia Frank, 1961, two sons, Jeremy and Miles.
Created Commander of the British Empire, 1989: Fellow of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, 1971 and Doctor of Drama, 1999.
After National Service, when he found himself in Forces’ Broadcasting, he studied for the stage at The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, where he won the James Bridie Gold Medal.
Joined the Birmingham Rep. in 1958, where roles included Hamlet and Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest, before going on to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 where he stayed off and on for the next 15 years, parts including : Aragon in The Merchant of Venice , Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both Antipholi in The Comedy of Errors , Edmund in King Lear, Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Chorus in Henry V, Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, Malcolm in Macbeth, Cassius in Julius Caesar, Angelo in Measure for Measure, Buckingham in Richard III, Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Prospero in The Tempest, Berowne in Love’s Labours Lost, Iachimo in Cymbeline, Richard II and Bolingbroke in Richard II (alternating with Richard Pasco) and title roles in Coriolanus, Pericles and Richard III.
Non-Shakespearean roles included The Doctor in The Representative, The Herald and Marat in the Marat/Sade (also on Broadway), Vendice in The Revenger’s Tragedy, Shalimov in Summerfolk.
Outside the RSC he played Tom Wrench in Trelawney (Bristol Old Vic and West End). In 1976 he played Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady on Broadway, and in 1977 went to the Shaw Festival Theatre in Canada to play Jack Tanner in Man and Superman (in its entirety), and the Doctor in The Millionnairess.
In 1979 he played Khlestakov in The Government Inspector and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet both at the Old Vic; in 1995, the title role in The Miser (Chichester Festival Theatre); in 1997, Title role in The Magistrate (Chichester Festival Theatre); in 1999, The Seven Ages of Man (Guildford).
Film and Television credits include Eyeless in Gaza, Marat in The Marat/Sade, Robespierre in Danton’s Death, Montgomery in Ike - The War Years and Churchill And His Generals; Bill Haydon in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Major Neuheim in Private Shulz (Royal Television Society Award), Frederick Fairlie in The Woman in White, Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pandit Nehru in Mountbatten - The Last Viceroy, the Master in Porterhouse Blue, Blunt, General Burgoyne in The Devil’s Disciple, Edward Spencer in Troubles, Mr Warren in Brazil, Ray Malcolm in Star Quality, State Prosecutor in Cry Freedom, Sir Nigel Irvine in The Fourth Protocol, the Father in Burning Secret, Sir Robert Morton in The Winslow Boy, Francis Urquhart in House of Cards (BAFTA Award, Royal Television Award, Broadcasting Press Guild Award), To Play the King, The Final Cut (Variety Club Award), Cholet in The Phantom of the Opera, Spearpoint in The Gravy Train and The Gravy Train Goes East, Rex Hunt in An Ungentlemanly Act, Edwin in Foreign Affairs, Sir Mason Harwood in The Year of the Comet, Vorontsov in Catherine The Great, the Ghost in The Canterville Ghost, Lord Groan in Gormenghast (1999), Stephen Tyler in The Magician’s House 1 &2 (1999 and 2000), Dr. Joseph Bell in Murder Rooms 1 & 2 (1999 and 2000).
Published: Prefaces to Merry Wives, Cymbeline and Richard II.