Baal
Babies Grow Old
Back to Methuselah
Bad Weather
George Baker
Sean Baker
The Balcony
Bandits
Teresa Banham
Barbarians
Frances Barber
The Barbican
Howard Barker
Peter Barnes
Desmond Barrit
Bartholomew Fair
John Barton
Linda Bassett
Bastard Angel
Alan Bates
Simon Russell Beale
Sean Bean
The Beast
Maureen Beattie
Francis Beaumont
Beauty and the Beast
The Beaux' Stratagem
Becket
Samuel Beckett
Beckett Shorts
The Beggar's Opera
Brendan Behan
Katy Behean
Aphra Behn
Belcher's Luck
Believe What You Will
Christopher Benjamin
Paul Bentall
John Berger
Sarah Berger
Cicely Berry
Suzanne Bertish
Kirsty Besterman
Paul Bettany
The Bewitched
Bingo
Birdsong
The Birthday Party
The Bite of the Night
Colin Blakely
Claudie Blakley
Marjorie Bland
Brian Blessed
The Blue Angel
The Body
Michael Bogdanov
Robert Bolt
Edward Bond
Samantha Bond
Ken Bones
Hugh Bonneville
Laurence Boswell
John Bott
Dion Boucicault
John Bowe
Raymond Bowers
Robert Bowman
Stephen Boxer
Michael Boyd
Danny Boyle
David Bradley
John Bradley
Cathryn Bradshaw
Kenneth Branagh
Brand
Breaking the Silence
Bertolt Brecht
Howard Brenton
David Brierley
The Bright and Bold Design
Stephen Brimson Lewis
Jasper Britton
Brixton Stories
Jim Broadbent
The Broken Heart
Richard Brome
Peter Brook
Siân Brooke
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Bille Brown
Susan Brown
Brenda Bruce
Emily Bruni
Giordano Bruno
Robert Bryan
Georg Büchner
Mikhail Afanaseyev Bulgakov
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Bundle
Anthony Burgess
Alfred Burke
Alan Burrett
John Bury
Judy Buxton
Patsy Byrne
Lord Byron
Alan Bates was one of the discoveries of George Devine's English Stage Company at the Royal Court, the first Cliff in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956). Before breaking into films in the early 1960s he played Mick in the premiere production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. Throughout his career he remained committed to the stage, working regularly with such writers as David Storey and Simon Gray. His profile as a film star obscured the importance of his place in the contemporary theatre.
He trained at RADA and, after national service in the RAF, began his career with the Midland Theatre Company—Denis Cannan's You and Your Wife, Molière's School for Wives and Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors (Coventry, 1955). The following year he joined the new English Stage Company. As well as Cliff in Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson), he played Simon in Angus Wilson's The Mulberry Bush (George Devine, 1956); Hopkins in The Crucible (Devine, 1956); Stapleton in Nigel Dennis's Cards of Identity (Richardson, 1956); Harcourt in The Country Wife (Devine, 1956-57); Le Crachton in Jean Giraudoux's The Apollo de Bellac (Richardson, 1957); and Dr Brock in Michael Hastings's Yes—and After (John Dexter, 1957). He went with Look Back to New York in 1958, and then left the Royal Court to play the forlorn younger son in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (British premiere, Jose Quintero, Edinburgh Festival and Globe). His performance as the arrogant young landlord to Donald Pleasance's tramp in The Caretaker (Donald McWhinnie, Arts, 1960, New York, 1961) climaxed the first phase of his career.
His good looks, unaffected charm and intuitive style of playing allowed for a smooth transition into features (he was better at understatement and more adaptable than most of his Royal Court contemporaries). The resulting body of work is impressively diverse and compelling: Frank Rice in The Entertainer (Richardson, 1960); The Man in Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961); A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962); The Running Man (Carol Reed, 1963); Mick in The Caretaker (Clive Donner, 1964); the English writer opposite Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannis, 1964); Nothing But the Best (Donner, 1964); Georgy Girl (Silvio Narizzano, 1966); King of Hearts (Philippe de Broca, 1966); Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd (Schlesinger, 1967); The Fixer (John Frankenheimer, 1968, Oscar nomination); Birkin in Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969); Vershinin in Three Sisters (Laurence Olivier, 1970, based on the National Theatre production); the father of a disabled daughter in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Peter Medak, 1971); The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971); the writer opposite Dominique Sanda in Story of a Love Story (Frankenheimer, 1973); Butley (Harold Pinter, 1974); In Celebration (Lindsay Anderson, 1975); Royal Flash (1975); An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky, 1977); The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowsky, 1978); The Rose (1979); Diaghilev in Nijinsky (1981); Quartet (James Ivory, 1982); The Return of the Soldier (1983); The Wicked Lady (1984); Duet for One (1986); Prayer for the Dying (1987); We Think the World of You (1989); Mr Frost (1990); Dr M (Claude Chabrol, 1990); Claudius in Hamlet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1991); Losing Track (1992); Secret Friends (Dennis Potter, 1992); Shuttlecock (1994); Silent Tongue (1994); The Grotesque (1996); Gayev in Varya (Michael Cacoyannis, 1999); the butler in Gosford Park (2001); The Mothman Prophecies (2002); Evelyn (Bruce Beresford, 2002); The Sum of All Fears (2002); Hollywood North (2003); The Statement (Norman Jewison, 2003).
On the stage, his work for Simon Gray amounted to a set of variations on themes of failure and regret, blackly comic, the characters becoming increasingly dishevelled and melancholic: the title role in Butley (Harold Pinter, Criterion, 1971, New York, 1972, Evening Standard Award); Simon Hench in Otherwise Engaged (Pinter, Queen's, 1975, Variety Club Award); Stage Struck (Stephen Hollis, Vaudeville, 1979); the title role in Melon (Christopher Morahan, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 1987); Simon Hench in Simply Disconnected (Richard Wilson, Minerva, Chichester, 1996); and J.G. in Life Support (Aldwych, 1997). He also created roles for David Storey in productions directed by Lindsay Anderson—In Celebration (Royal Court, 1969), Life Class (Royal Court, 1974), Stages (NT Cottesloe, 1992); Harold Pinter—the sadistic interrogator in One for the Road (Lyric Studio, 1984); Arnold Wesker—The Four Seasons (Saville, 1965); and Peter Shaffer—the title role in Yonadab (Peter Hall, NT Olivier, 1985). Other theatre work: Richard Ford in Jean Kerr's Poor Richard (Peter Wood, New York, 1964); Redl in Osborne's A Patriot for Me (Ronald Eyre, Chichester, 1983, also Theatre Royal Haymarket and Ahmanson Theater, Los Angeles, Variety Award); and Thomas Bernhard's The Showman (Jonathan Kent, Almeida, 1993).
He selected his classical roles carefully, at intervals. In 1967 he appeared at Stratford, Ontario, as Richard III and Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor; in 1970 at the Nottingham Playhouse as Hamlet (also Cambridge Theatre, 1971); in 1976 at the Derby Playhouse as Trigorin in The Seagull (also Duke of York's); in 1985 at the Riverside Studios as Edgar in Strindberg's The Dance of Death (Keith Hack); in 1989 at the Strand as Chekhov's Ivanov and Benedick to Felicity Kendall's Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (Morahan); in 1995 at the Haymarket as Solness in The Master Builder (Peter Hall); and in 1996 at Chichester as Kuzovkin in Turgenev's Fortune's Fool (Gale Edwards).
His work at the RSC was separated by a gap of over twenty-five years. He joined the Company in 1973 to play Petruchio opposite Susan Fleetwood in The Taming of the Shrew (Clifford Williams, RST). He returned in 1999 to play Antony opposite Frances de la Tour in Antony and Cleopatra (Steven Pimlott, RST and Barbican) and the title role in Timon of Athens (Gregory Doran, RST). Hidden behind an unkempt beard, his Antony looked like a man lost in the wilderness—it was a big, emotionally-charged performance. Sadly, illness prevented him from playing Timon.
Major writers and directors lured him onto the small screen at intervals: Simon Gray's Plaintiffs and Defendants and Two Sundays (BBC, 1975); The Collection (1977); Dennis Potter's version of The Mayor of Casterbridge (BBC, 1978); Very Like a Whale (1980); The Trespasser (1980); John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father (ITV, 1982); Separate Tables (John Schlesinger, 1983); Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad (Schlesinger, BBC, 1983, BAFTA Award); Graham Greene's Doctor Fisher of Geneva (BBC, 1984); One for the Road (1985); Pack of Lies (Anthony Page, 1988); Tom Stoppard's The Dog It Was That Died (ITV, 1988); Proust in Bennett's 102 Boulevard Haussmann (BBC, 1991); Gray's Unnatural Pursuits (BBC, 1992); Bounderby in Peter Barnes's version of Hard Times (BBC, 1994); Alan Plater's Oliver's Travels (BBC, 1995); St Patrick (2000); Arabian Nights (BBC, 2000); Love in a Cold Climate (BBC, 2001); and George V in Bertie and Elizabeth (ITV, 2002).
Education: Herbert Strutt Grammar School, Belper, Derbyshire; RADA
RSC: Joined 1973
Seasons: 1973 (Strat.); 1999 (Strat.)-99/00 (Lond.)
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