Over his kaleidoscopic career, the great Shakespearean was a stalwart of the RSC, co-founded a ‘rock’n’roll’ theatre company and excelled at Chekhov and Pinter
M
ichael Pennington was what Richard II – a part he played with great distinction – called a “well-graced actor”. He had a resonant voice, a handsome countenance, a security and ease on stage. But looking back over his career, on his death at the age of 82, I am struck by its astonishing variety.
He co-founded, with Michael Bogdanov, the English Shakespeare Company. He toured the world with one-man shows on Shakespeare and Chekhov. He directed here and abroad and wrote 10 books full of practical wisdom. On top of all that, he was witty and delightful company.
His acting career falls into distinctive phases. He spent much of the 1960s and 70s with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where many performances stand out. His Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1978 was a man hooked on the sublime rhetoric of love. And for the same director, John Barton, in 1980, he was a brilliant Hamlet: sharp brained, sweet-souled and mellifluous of voice in the Gielgud tradition. He later moved to the National Theatre, where in Venice Preserv’d he and Ian McKellen recaptured a heroic style of acting, and where in Strider: The Story of a Horse he endowed the equine protagonist with a pedigree dignity through a light-stepping walk on the balls of his feet.
