Ralph Richardson
[11] The pay, ten shillings a week, was attractive, but office life was not; he lacked concentration, frequently posting documents to the wrong people as well as engaging in pranks that alarmed his superiors.
[24] Through Jackson's chief director, the veteran taskmaster H. K. Ayliff, Richardson "absorbed the influence of older contemporaries like Gerald du Maurier, Charles Hawtrey and Mrs Patrick Campbell.
"[25] Hewitt was seen as a rising star but Richardson's talents were not yet so apparent;[26] he was allotted supporting roles such as Lane in The Importance of Being Earnest and Albert Prossor in Hobson's Choice.
[18] Richardson made his London debut in July 1926 as the stranger in Oedipus at Colonus in a Sunday-night performance at the Scala Theatre, with a cast including Percy Walsh, John Laurie and D. A.
[30] Richardson left the run of Yellow Sands in March 1928 and rejoined Ayliff, playing Pygmalion in Back to Methuselah at the Royal Court Theatre; also in the cast was a former colleague from the Birmingham Repertory, Laurence Olivier.
[n 5] As Tranio in Ayliff's modern-dress production of The Taming of the Shrew, Richardson played the character as a breezy cockney,[n 6] winning praise for turning a usually dreary role into something richly entertaining.
The biographer Ronald Hayman writes that though a fine singer, "Robeson had no ear for blank verse" and even Peggy Ashcroft's superb performance as Desdemona was not enough to save the production from failure.
Its profile had been raised considerably by Baylis's producer, Harcourt Williams, who in 1929 persuaded the young West End star John Gielgud to lead the drama company.
"[38] The first production of the season was Henry IV, Part 1, with Gielgud as Hotspur and Richardson as Prince Hal; the latter was thought by The Daily Telegraph "vivacious, but a figure of modern comedy rather than Shakespeare.
Gielgud wrote in 1983, "Besides cherishing our long years of work together in the theatre, where he was such an inspiring and generous partner, I grew to love him in private life as a great gentleman, a rare spirit, fair and balanced, devotedly loyal and tolerant and, as a companion, bursting with vitality, curiosity and humour.
[26] At the beginning of 1931 Baylis re-opened Sadler's Wells Theatre with a production of Twelfth Night starring Gielgud as Malvolio and Richardson as Sir Toby Belch.
[60] In August of the same year he finally had a long-running star part, the title role in Barré Lyndon's comedy thriller, The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse, which played for 492 performances, closing in October 1937.
Richardson made two stipulations: first, as he was unwilling to seek his own release from the forces, the governing board of the Old Vic should explain to the authorities why it should be granted; secondly, that he should share the acting and management in a triumvirate.
[92] In Miller's words, "Carol Reed's sensitive direction drew faultless performances not just from Ralph as Baines (the butler and mistakenly suspected murderer), but also from Michèle Morgan as his mistress, Sonia Dresdel as his cold-hearted wife, and especially from Bobby Henrey as the distraught boy, Philippe.
He headed a strong cast, with Renée Asherson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson as the sisters, but reviewers found the production weakly directed, and some felt that Richardson failed to disguise his positive personality when playing the ineffectual Vershinin.
[18] Back in the West End, Richardson was in another Sherriff play, The White Carnation, in 1953, and in November of the same year he and Gielgud starred together in N. C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea, which ran at the Haymarket for 386 performances.
[113] Richardson turned down the role of Estragon in Peter Hall's premiere of the English language version of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1955, and later reproached himself for missing the chance to be in "the greatest play of my generation".
The former, a sad piece about a failed and deluded insurance manager, ran for 435 performances in 1957–58;[118] Richardson co-starred with three leading ladies in succession: Celia Johnson, Wendy Hiller and his wife.
Alec Guinness, who played the main role, noted "the object-lesson in upstaging in the last scene between Richardson and Noël Coward", faithfully captured by the director, Carol Reed.
The critic David Benedictus wrote of Richardson's performance, "he is choleric and gouty certainly, the script demands that he shall be, but his most engaging quality, his love for his son in spite of himself, shines through every line.
In The New York Times Clive Barnes wrote, "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the English-speaking theater.
[138] Back at the Royal Court in 1971 Richardson starred in John Osborne's West of Suez, after which, in July 1972, he surprised many by joining Peggy Ashcroft in a drawing-room comedy, Lloyd George Knew My Father by William Douglas-Home.
[144] Some critics felt the play was too slight for its two stars, but Harold Hobson thought Richardson found unsuspected depths in the character of the ostensibly phlegmatic General Boothroyd.
[148] In The Observer, George Melly wrote, "As for Sir Ralph as Dr Rank, he grows from the ageing elegant cynic of his first appearance (it's even a pleasure to watch him remove his top hat) to become the heroic dying stoic of his final exit without in any way forcing the pace.
The critic Michael Billington wrote that Hall had done the impossible in reconciling the contradictory aspects of the play and that "Richardson's Borkman is both moral monster and self-made superman; and the performance is full of a strange, unearthly music that belongs to this actor alone.
There is both comedy and pain in the piece: the critic Michael Coveney called their performance "the funniest double-act in town",[127] but Peter Hall said of Richardson, "I do not think any other actor could fill Hirst with such a sense of loneliness and creativity as Ralph does.
[18] He played Lord Touchwood in The Double Dealer (1978), the Master in The Fruits of Enlightenment (1979), Old Ekdal in The Wild Duck (1979) and Kitchen in Storey's Early Days, specially written for him.
[161][n 15] For television, Richardson played Simeon in Jesus of Nazareth (1977),[104] made studio recordings of No Man's Land (1978) and Early Days (1982),[138] and was a guest in the 1981 Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.
[170] Having been a devoted Roman Catholic as a boy, he became disillusioned with religion as a young man, but drifted back to faith: "I came to a kind of feeling I could touch a live wire through prayer".
[154] Harold Hobson wrote, "Sir Ralph is an actor who, whatever his failure in heroic parts, however short of tragic grandeur his Othello or his Macbeth may have fallen, has nevertheless, in unromantic tweeds and provincial hats, received a revelation.
