Thursday, January 24, 2013

Good baddie

I went to an excellent party yesterday, to mark Peter Donaldson's (final ?) retreat from the microphones of Radio 4. Excellent, short, speeches were made, featuring that old news-reading ripsnorter, Lee Bum Suk.

It wasn't the time for a full tour of the Donaldson days. Further research overnight has found him in a modern dress production of Julius Caesar for the National Youth Theatre in 1962 - with fellow cast members including Martin Jarvis, Hywel Bennett, Robin "Poldark" Ellis and Kenneth Cranham.

Thence, in 1964, he moves to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park for The Taming of The Shrew, with Dinsdale Landen and Trevor Peacock.

In 1965, he's part of a stellar Royal Shakespeare Henry V at the Aldwych - Ian Holm, Eric Porter, Michael Bryant, Michael Jayston, Michele Dotrice, and more, directed by John Barton and Trevor Nunn.

The biggie comes in 1967 - lead baddie in a Sinhalese version of James Bond, (Jamis Banda, Agent Sri 007) entitled Sorungeth Soru. Peter had returned to Colombo on holiday, after touring Shakespeare there in previous years. The travel company went bust, and while stranded, he was asked to join in the filming. "It was after a couple of bottles of beer and some devilled prawns that I suggested - half in jest - playing the son of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun".

That's probably enough. You don't need to know about blow-torches. (2105 update: Link dead, but Peter used to be part of a team running a website called "Collecting Friends" - and boasted a neat collection of blow-torches)

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