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
Simon Russell Beale joined the RSC in 1986 having previously worked at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the Royal Exchange, Manchester. During eight continuous years with the RSC he progressed from clowns and fops to Richard III, Konstantin in The Seagull and Edgar in King Lear.
His RSC career began with the Young Shepherd in The Winter's Tale (Terry Hands, RST, 1986, Barbican, 1987). In that first season he also played a dissolute aristocrat in Nick Dear's Art of Success (Adrian Noble, TOP, Pit); Ed Know'ell in Every Man in His Humour (John Caird, Swan, Mermaid); Fawcett in The Fair Maid of the West (Trevor Nunn, Swan, Mermaid); Kulygin in The Storm (Pit); and Nick in Tony Marchant's play about City dealers, Speculators (Barry Kyle, Pit). In 1988/89 he played three fops, Clincher Senior in The Constant Couple (Roger Michell, Swan), Sir Fopling Flutter in The Man of Mode (Garry Hynes, Swan, Pit) and Lord Acre in Edward Bond's Restoration (Michell, Swan, Pit). His achievement in the playing of these characters was to suggest loneliness and pain. In direct contrast he ended the season in three new plays in the Pit: Henry in Richard Nelson's Some Americans Abroad (Michell), Engels in Frank McGuinness's Mary and Lizzie (Sarah Pia Anderson) and Danny in Stephen Poliakoff's Playing With Trains (Ron Daniels).
The next few years revealed the range of his talent: his seedy Thersites in tramp's coat and balaclava was the most memorable character in a production of Troilus and Cressida by Sam Mendes that also featured Ralph Fiennes, Amanda Root, Ciaran Hinds and David Troughton (Swan, 1990, Pit, 1991); his Richard III (Mendes, TOP and Small-scale Tour, 1992), a shaven head jutting out from a leather greatcoat, was gleefully psychotic; his Konstantin in The Seagull (Terry Hands, Swan, 1990, Barbican, 1991) and Oswald in Ghosts (Katie Mitchell, TOP, 1993, Pit, 1994) had a despair which went beyond acting; for Edgar in King Lear (Noble, RST, 1993, Barbican, 1994) he drew on all four. In Noble's production Beale's Edgar was given many memorable moments: seen in tableaux against a vast moon as he took on the persona of Poor Tom for the first time; sharing snatches of song with the Fool during the storm ('I smell the blood of an Englishman'); beating Oswald to death with a club. He also played Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost (Hands, RST, 1990, Barbican, 1991); the title role in Marlowe's Edward II (Gerard Murphy, Swan, 1990, Pit, 1991); Mr Hyde in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Peter Wood, Barbican, 1991); and a revisionist Ariel, stiff-backed and humourless, to Alec McCowan's Prospero in The Tempest (Mendes, RST, 1993, Barbican, 1994).
Since 1995 he has been based at the National: Mosca in Volpone (Matthew Warchus, Olivier, 1995); Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Matthew Francis, Lyttelton, 1996); Iago in Othello (Sam Mendes, Cottesloe and Salzburg Festival, 1997); Voltaire/Dr Pangloss in Candide (John Caird, Olivier, 1999, Olivier Award); Alfred Evelyn in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Money (Caird, Olivier, 1999); Dudakov in Summerfolk (Trevor Nunn, Olivier, 1999); George IV in Nick Stafford's Battle Royal (Howard Davies, Lyttelton, 2000); the title role in Hamlet (Caird, Lyttelton and International Tour, 2000); Charlotte Jones's Humble Boy (Caird, Cottesloe, 2001); George in Stoppard's Jumpers (David Leveaux, Lyttelton, 2003, New York, 2004); the title role in Brecht's Galileo (Davies, Olivier, 2006); Face in The Alchemist (Hytner, Olivier, 2006); Benedick opposite Zoë Wanamaker in Much Ado About Nothing (Hytner, Olivier, 2007-08); Undershaft in Shaw's Major Barbara (Hytner, Olivier, 2008).
Elsewhere: the title role in Uncle Vanya and Malvolio in Twelfth Night (Mendes, Donmar, 2002, New York, 2003); the title role, opposite Emma Fielding, in Macbeth (Caird, Almeida, 2005); Philip in Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist (David Grindley, Donmar, 2005); and the King in Spamalot (Palace Theatre, 2007).
Screen work: Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992); Adrian Noble's Measure for Measure workshop (BBC, 1994); Charles Musgrove in Persuasion (Roger Michell, BBC, 1995); the Second Gravedigger in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996); Widmerpool in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time (Channel Four, 1997); Schubert in The Temptation of Franz Schubert (Peter Webber, Channel Four, 1997); Sir Edward in An Ideal Husband (Oliver Parker, 1999); The Gathering (2002); The Young Visiters (BBC, 2003); and Churchill in Dunkirk (2004).
Education: St Paul's Cathedral Choir School; Clifton College, Bristol; Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
RSC: Joined 1986; Associate Artist (since 1992)
Seasons: 1986 (Strat.)-87 (Lond.); 1988 (Strat.)-89 (Lond.); 1990 (Strat.)-91 (Lond.); 1992/93 (Strat./Small-scale Tour); 1993 (Strat.)-94 (Lond.)
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