Max Adrian

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Max Adrian bigraphy, stories - Northern Irish actor

Max Adrian : biography

1 November 1903 – 19 January 1973

Max Adrian (1 November 1903 – 19 January 1973) was an Irish stage, film and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

In addition to his success as a character actor in classical drama, he was known for his work as a singer and comic actor in revue and musicals, and in one-man shows about George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, and in cinema and television films, notably Ken Russell’s Song of Summer as the ailing composer Delius. His voice and acting style were distinctive: The Times referred to his "Osric-like elaborations of manner", and his voice "like no other heard on the English stage of his day, vestigially Irish and harshly attractive."

Selected filmography

  • The Primrose Path (1934)
  • Penn of Pennsylvania (1941)

Biography

Early years

Adrian was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, the son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor and Mabel Lloyd Thornton., Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2007, accessed 27 January 2009 He was educated at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, whose past pupils also included Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.Morley, page 3.

Adrian began his career as a chorus boy at a silent moving-picture house, coming on as part of the chorus line while the reels were being changed. He made his stage debut in the chorus of Katja the Dancer in 1925.according to his Who’s Who entry; Morley dates his debut to August 1926 He then toured with Lady Be Good and The Blue Train. He made his West End debut in The Squall at the Globe Theatre in December 1927. After working with Tod Slaughter’s company at Peterborough, he joined the weekly rep in Northampton, where he took some forty roles a year. He made further West End appearances in The Best of Both Worlds at the Players’ Theatre in 1930, The Glass Wall at the Embassy Theatre in 1933, First Episode by Terence Rattigan and Philip Heimann at the Comedy Theatre in 1934 (later toured in the UK and then transferred to Broadway,Where the play was retitled College Sinners (ref. Gaye, p. 288) This Desirable Residence at the Embassy in 1935, and England Expects, also at the Embassy in 1934. The Times described his performance in the last as "a gilded habitué of the backstairs" as outstanding.The Times, 25 January 1930, p. 10; 21 February 1933, p. 10; 27 January 1934, p. 8; 28 May 1935, p. 14; and 14 April 1936, p. 8

Classical roles and revue

Adrian first achieved wide public notice in a nine-month season at the Westminster Theatre from September 1938, as Pandarus in a modern dress Troilus and Cressida and Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington in The Doctor’s Dilemma, winning enthusiastic notices from the critics: "Mr Max Adrian triumphantly turns Pandarus into a chattering and repulsive fribble of the glossily squalid night-club type";The Observer, 25 September 1938, p. 13 "The egregious ‘B.B.’… is a great piece of fun, and Mr. Max Adrian rightly draws him with all possible exuberance of line."The Times, 18 February 1939, p. 10

Adrian joined the Old Vic company in 1939, playing the Dauphin in Shaw’s Saint Joan, "a beautifully malicious study in slyness, effeminacy, meanness, and a curious lost, inverted dignity."The Times, 12 October 1939, p. 6 He continued classical work with John Gielgud’s company at the Haymarket Theatre (1944–45), where he appeared as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Osric in Hamlet, and Tattle in William Congreve’s Love for Love.The Times, 20 January 1973, p. 16

Away from the classics, he played the Strawman in The Wizard of Oz at the Phoenix Theatre in 1943. In 1947, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Adrian began performing in a series of revues (Tuppence Coloured, Oranges and Lemons, Penny Plain, Airs on a Shoestring, From Here to There, and Fresh Airs) in which he played more than 2,000 performances,The Times 12 July 1955, p. 5 and established himself, in Sheridan Morley’s words, "as a superlative – if eccentric – light comedian." Fellow performers in the revues included Joyce Grenfell, Rose Hill and Elisabeth Welch. Contributors included Michael Flanders, Donald Swann and Alan Melville, and the producer was Laurier Lister (1907–1986), who became Adrian’s lifelong partner."Obituary of Mr Laurier Lister", The Times, 2 October 1986 Adrian’s musical numbers included "Prehistoric Complaint" (as a misfit caveman), "Excelsior" (as a put-upon Sherpa), "Guide to Britten" (as a manic conductor), "In the D’Oyly Cart" ((sic) as a jaded Gilbert and Sullivan performer), and "Surly Girls" (as headmistress of St. Trinian’s).