Anew McMaster

Andrew "Anew" McMaster (24 December 1891 – 24 August 1962) was a British stage actor who during his nearly 45 year acting career toured the UK, Ireland, Australia and the United States.

[1] One of the last actor-managers "of the old school - and an epitome of the type",[8] on occasions McMaster would persuade a 'big name' to act with his company as a draw for audiences, and Frank Benson (1928), Sara Allgood (1929) and Mrs Patrick Campbell appeared with him.

[9] In 1933 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon he appeared as Hamlet opposite Esme Church as Gertrude, Coriolanus, Macduff in Macbeth, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, Prince Escalus in Romeo and Juliet, and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew.

Having ‘a great organ voice’, Harold Pinter, who acted in his company in Ireland from 1951 to 1953 and called him 'Perhaps the greatest actor-manager of his time',[10] later described McMaster as ‘evasive, proud, affectionate, shrewd, merry’.

[He] stood dead in the centre of the role, and the great sweeping symphonic playing would begin, the rare tension and release within him, the arrest, the swoop, the savagery, the majesty and repose.

'Mac' generally took two nights off a week when the rest of the company performed plays like The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, Rope and An Inspector Calls but Shakespeare dominated our lives.

These included: Pauline Flanagan,[3] Milo O'Shea, T. P. McKenna, Kenneth Haigh, Henry Woolf, Harold Pinter, Donal Donnelly and Patrick Magee.