Nicol Williamson

[wadsy]

Very sad news. He was a wonderful, fantastic, powerful actor. R.I.P. Nicol!!

[batman]

A truly great actor on both stage and screen, much missed since his premature departure from films.

RIP sir.

[julian_craster]

Obituary: Nicol Williamson, Mercurial and brilliant actor whose career was undermined by his flaws



Thursday 26 January 2012

THE INDEPENDENT:
Nicol Williamson: Mercurial and brilliant actor whose career was undermined by his flaws - Obituaries - News - The Independent



Nicol Williamson was the notorious bad boy of the theatre, his unpredictable behaviour, unreliability and blunt rudeness to those he did not respect – which may well have been the majority of those he met in and out of the theatre world – having to be weighed by the theatres that employed him for his undoubted brilliance as an actor, and a star appeal that never fully flowered because of the reluctance of film producers and theatrical impresarios to engage him. Twin devils seemed to co-exist in his lanky body, one that drove his private life to frequent excess and public exhibitionism, and the other in which a creative genius seemed to be about to explode. He was quintessentially a model for the 19th century decadent romantic, a Byron, a des Esseintes or a Rimbaud. As an actor he could be electric: John Osborne declared him to be "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando".

He was born and brought up in Hamilton outside Glasgow; it is difficult to imagine him as a boy in that quiet little town where the main cultural event of the year is the Salvation Army's Christmas carol concert. He started his career at the Dundee Rep in 1960, stayed there two years, then went to the Arts Theatre in Cambridge and transferred to the Royal Court from there with That's Us, staying on with the English Stage Company in a number of demanding roles. They included Jacobean and period drama and modern plays, the most successful of which was Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence, a palpable hit that transferred to the West End and had several later revivals, about a complex London barrister, but he was also well cast as Sebastian Dangerfield in The Ginger Man.

One of his greatest performances was as Vladimir in the 1964 revival of Waiting for Godot. Anthony Page, Nicol's preferred director, was in charge, but Beckett turned up at rehearsals and was unhappy about the way the production was progressing, the actor retaining his London barrister's accent for the author's reflective tramp. "Where do you come from? Is that your natural voice?" asked Beckett, and when told that Nicol was Scottish, asked if he could not use his natural non-London intonation. That evening Beckett looked pleased, more so as the days passed, and he commented, "There's a touch of genius there!" The opening night was a triumph, the audience electrified by his trumpeted scream of "I can't go on!" at the climax of the great final monologue.

From then Beckett was Williamson's God. When I invited him in 1965 to take part in a Beckett reading at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford on a Sunday night, he insisted on Beckett's personal direction, and we visited him at Ussy on the Sunday before. We had launched the previous day and Nicol's single-minded enthusiasm was such that he cancelled both his Saturday performances of Inadmissible Evidence, then playing at Wyndham's, next door to our restaurant, and sent on his understudy – who also had to play the whole week following, because Williamson, having returned from the rehearsal in France on the Monday, then disappeared for the whole week.

But the day before the Sundayperformance at Stratford, when I had made emergency changes in the programme, he appeared at my flat to rehearse, and took the audience by storm the next day, throwing the other readers into confusion by his innovations. Patrick Magee said that he would never again appear on the same stage as an actor so selfish.

With the RSC he performed Arden of Faversham at the New Arts Theatre and played Sweeney in the TS Eliot memorial production of Sweeney Agonistes. He became a charismatic actor in films as well, but his appearances, especially in commercial productions, became rarer because his temperament and arrogance did not appeal to directors.

His marriage to the actress Jill Townsend was of short duration, and problems rising from his divorce, his messy private life and his mounting debt to the Inland Revenue forced him to move to New York, where he quickly blotted his copybook by knocking down David Merrick, the most powerful man on Broadway at the time. There he repeated some of his British successes and performed in roles that included Hamlet and Macbeth, but always for short runs.

He was cast as the ghost of John Barrymore, appearing to help a young actor play Hamlet, commented voluably to the press on the weakness of the play and others in the cast, and at an early performance actually stabbed the other actor during a fencing episode. He strode to the footlights and announced, "Something's gone wrong. You'd better bring down the curtain." Most thought it was part of the play. The second act started after more than an hour's interval with an understudy, and Williamson playing normally, but the actors had summoned Equity and the play closed a few nights later.

Williamson's career was peppered with such incidents. He had a good natural tenor voice and could mimic any crooner perfectly, and if he heard an accent he could imitate it; years later he could still do Beckett's voice perfectly. He devised a number of one-man shows, songs, patter and extracts from plays and other literature, but, in spite of brilliant moments, they were not successful, and while he could excite an audience, he had little critical judgement in choosing and interpreting a text without outside help.

His films included: Inadmissible Evidence (1967), The Bofors Gun (1968), The Seven Per Cent Solution (1975), The Human Factor (1979), Excalibur (1980) – the film for which he is probably best known, as Merlin – Black Widow (1986) and several others of varying quality, including The Exorcist III. Other plays in which he appeared include The Entertainer (1983), The Lark (1983) and The Real Thing (1985).

In person he was entertaining but often embarrassing company, carrying role-playing to extremes and needing to dominate every assembly at which he was present, especially in his manic moods. When depressive he was pitiable and usually stayed on his own. But whoever saw his Vladimir and heard that despairing scream, embodying the whole anguish of the human condition, which is then followed by a resumption of the human need to regain a vestige of dignity, will never forget it. Metaphorically it also encompassed his life.

Although Williamson's death was only announced yesterday, his son Luke said that he had died on 16 December of oesophageal cancer.

John Calder

Nicol Williamson, actor: born Hamilton, Scotland 14 September 1938; married 1971 Jill Townsend (divorced 1977; one son); died Amsterdam 16 December 2011.


Why no mention of his 1969 Hamlet film ?
I thought it was pretty good with Anthony Hopkins as his stepdad king, and Marianne Faithful as Ophelia, with Roger Livesey as the gravedigger.

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian

Nicol Williamson | Stage | The Guardian

Nick

Nicol Williamson
Actor whose reputation for unpredictability never undermined his electrifying talent
Michael Coveney
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 January 2012 12.58 GMT

Nicol Williamson, whose death of oesophageal cancer at the age of 73 has been announced, was arguably the most electrifying actor of his generation, but one whose career flickered and faded like a faulty light fitting. Tall and wiry, with a rasping scowl of a voice, a battered baby face and a mop of unruly curls, he was the best modern Hamlet since John Gielgud, and certainly the angriest, though he scuppered his own performance at the Round House, north London, in 1968, by apologising to the audience and walking off the stage. The experience was recycled in a 1991 Broadway comedy called I Hate Hamlet, in which he proved his point and fell out badly with his co-star.

The Round House Hamlet was directed by another great maverick of that time, Tony Richardson, who had directed Williamson as the dissolute lawyer Bill Maitland in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence (1964) at the Royal Court theatre. This was his greatest performance, and one from which he never really escaped, reviving it on the stage and making the 1968 movie; the play was seen again last year at the Donmar Warehouse, with Douglas Hodge in the leading role.

After a couple of chaotic performances in his own one-man show, and as the equally wild and unreliable actor John Barrymore A Night on the Town at the Criterion Theatre in London in 1994, Williamson was last sighted on the stage at the Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold, Flintshire, as King Lear in 2001.

Its director, Terry Hands, a one-time colleague at the Royal Shakespeare Company, allowed him free rein to wander through the play, but many of the speeches were misplaced. Like Eric Morecambe playing the piano, he knew all the notes, but not necessarily in the right order. Still, the performance was fretted with moments of golddust and heartbreak, and you would not willingly have exchanged it for many a more competent or predictable performance.

Hands had taken the sensible precaution of cancelling the second-night performance as the first one was followed by the mother of all first-night parties, with Williamson banging out the jazz standards he loved to sing with a group of willing musicians, including the film critic Ian Christie.

Williamson's talent for acting and lust for life were brilliantly recorded in a 1972 essay by Kenneth Tynan for the New Yorker which charted his haphazard preparation for a concert at the White House for President Richard Nixon. When it was published, warts and all, Williamson was furious and never spoke to Tynan again.

He was born in Hamilton, near Glasgow, the son of Mary (nee Storrie) and Hugh Williamson. He trained for the stage at the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama and made his professional debut at the Dundee Rep in 1960. In the following year, he appeared as Flute in Richardson's Royal Court production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

He was at the Arts theatre in Women Beware Women and in Henry Livings's Nil Carborundum in 1962. With Anthony Page directing, he played Vladimir at the Court in the first major London revival of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, partnered by Alfred Lynch as Estragon.

He took his performance of Bill Maitland to New York in 1965, where he was nominated for a Tony award and came to blows with the producer, David Merrick. His growing reputation for unpredictability never undermined his talent, which was recognised in Bafta best actor nominations for his film performances in Inadmissible Evidence, The Bofors Gun (1968) and a 1972 television film of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

When Trevor Nunn presented a season of Shakespeare's "Roman" plays at Stratford-upon-Avon, and later at the Aldwych in London, in 1973, Williamson gave a coruscating performance as an unusually virulent and misanthropic Coriolanus. He returned to Stratford in 1974 as a sour-faced, vinegary Malvolio in Twelfth Night and a wolverine, prowling Macbeth in the studio theatre, the Other Place. Nunn had started that production (Helen Mirren was Lady Macbeth) on the main stage in London, but cut out the Gothic excess for Stratford in a journey with the play that took him to the defining chamber version of it soon afterwards with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.

Williamson was never as much a part of the RSC as some of his leading contemporaries, but he did "muck in" with a small-scale production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya at the Other Place, with his wife, Jill Townsend, in 1975. He had married Townsend when she appeared as his daughter in the Broadway production of Inadmissible Evidence (they divorced in 1977).

His best-known film roles included Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, in which Watson, played by Robert Duvall, persuades Holmes to visit Sigmund Freud, played by Alan Arkin); and Merlin in John Boorman's Excalibur (1981, with Nigel Terry as Arthur and Helen Mirren as Morgana). "I enjoyed playing Merlin," Williamson told the Los Angeles Times. "I tried to make him a cross between my old English master and a space traveller, with a bit of Grand Guignol thrown in."

He had lived mostly in Amsterdam since 1970, but could sometimes be seen in various north London pubs, where he was quite happy to mind his own business and leave the pursuit of glamour and glory to other, less deserving performers. No one who saw him on stage will ever forget him, but it is difficult to see his career as anything but unfulfilled.

He is survived by his son, Luke.


Jack Gold writes: Friends made me fearful when they heard I was making my first feature film, The Bofors Gun, with Nicol Williamson. He had a reputation of a dangerous disposition combined with a staggering talent. The part of a near-psychotic squaddie was written by John McGrath with Nicol in mind. My fears were groundless. He was totally professional, exacting, volatile and provocative in his work, both with myself and with tremendous actors including David Warner, Ian Holm and John Thaw. His performance was justifiably acclaimed.

We worked together several more times, each one with a mixture of excitement and not a little little trepidation on my part: The Reckoning in 1969 (he was Michael Marler, a protagonist red in tooth and claw from working-class Liverpool, succeeding in the City and Berkshire), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, aka The Gangster Show (Brecht's comic, sinister take on Hitler), Macbeth (for the BBC, 1983) and Richard Nixon in a David Edgar version of the Watergate tapes, I Know What I Meant (1974); all strong, often dangerous, unlikeable characters.

Nicol never kowtowed to an audience or tried to charm them. Film crews adored him for his understanding and respect for their craft. He worked as strongly with other actors when he was off-camera as when on. His comic improvisations of the people around him were brilliant and often uncomfortable. He liked "stirring"; at the end of filming The Reckoning, we presented him with a 6ft wooden spoon.

Directing him was a constantly surprising process. He was quick to understand even a hint of a suggestion. There were rapid and subtle changes of expression, his antennae as finely tuned as his performances. He liked the challenges, the technicalities, the rigours of filming (Barry Jackson remembers Nicol filming repeated takes stripped to the waist during a freezing night shoot), but if ever there was a piano handy, he was immediately seated there, singing ballads, blues, rock, jazz. He loved the great musicians and improvisation. I think that latterly, that is where his heart truly lay.

• Nicol Williamson, actor, born 14 September 1938; died 16 December 2011

[didi-5]

If anyone has the Frost on Saturday DVD then watch the episode in which he does a reading - it is absolutely sensational. Also on Luke's site dedicated to Nicol he has made the recording of 'Jack' (about John Barrymore) available. I saw that and was blown away - you only get a feel from listening to it but that is extremely classy stuff.

[Merton Park]

Fantastic in The Reckoning, still one of my favourites. Great last line in the film, as mentioned by Cassidy.

RIP

[David Challinor]

...Just had a thought: I'm 99% certain Nicol never appeared on Parkinson. What a shame, it would have been a fascinating chat ...

[captainhaddock]

the saddest thing is he was one of those larger than life type fellows that only come along once in a while .

this week i have seen raph fiennes and jeremy irons interviewed and both have been meek and mild about films that are getting rave reviews and yet are both topically current to the present day world we live in and controversial

those sort of subjects would have been dynamite for actors of old

if a young nicol had been starring in them he would have shouted these films from the rooftops !

where are actors like that now ?

[Nick Dando]

Nicol was featured on BBC Radio 4s Last Word, which will be repeated on Sunday at 20:30.

BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - Last Word, Nicol Williamson, Gustav Leonhardt, Manuel Fraga and Hugh Carless

Nick

[Tom Weston]

A high octane actor/singer performer and so much more.
He was loved and respected, he will be remembered
Bon Voyage
Tom Weston

[zzfredzz]

[Brigger]

If anyone has the Frost on Saturday DVD then watch the episode in which he does a reading - it is absolutely sensational. Also on Luke's site dedicated to Nicol he has made the recording of 'Jack' (about John Barrymore) available. I saw that and was blown away - you only get a feel from listening to it but that is extremely classy stuff.

Is this the clip you are referring to Didi; it is as you say; sensational; and how ironic that it is about death..

[didi-5]

Yes Brigger, that's the one.

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian.

Michael Pennington on Nicol Williamson: 'Most of what is written about his unreliability is tosh' | Stage | The Guardian

Nick

Michael Pennington on Nicol Williamson: 'Most of what is written about his unreliability is tosh'

Michael Pennington
The Guardian, Sunday 29 January 2012


Nicol Williamson (obituary, 27 January), like John Osborne, was everything you didn't expect: very funny, sophisticated, subtly affectionate, wickedly observant, as interested in other people as a brilliant mimic has to be. His work was electrifying, of course, self-lacerating but deft, technically awesome – and ferociously disciplined. Most of what is written about his unreliability is tosh. He could and did play Hamlet on a couple of bottles of wine without dropping a stitch; and, on another occasion, a few hours after quite a serious car crash. He could be scary in the part but almost the best of it was his generous, humorous scene with Roger Livesey's Gravedigger. He was everything a certain kind of bolshie young actor wants to be: resentfully romantic, oddly nonchalant, but heroically committed to his job. I played Laertes to his Hamlet and fought the duel with him a couple of hundred times without a scratch. I also drank with him and dealt the cards till dawn: I kept up pretty well, but eventually took another turning and I suppose a less self-punishing one. But I'm forever grateful for his heart, his grit and the unforgiving standards he set.

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian.

Letter: Nicol Williamson obituary | The Guardian

Nick

Letter: Nicol Williamson obituary
David Parry
The Guardian, Sunday 29 January 2012


I went to Birmingham Central grammar school with Nicol Williamson (obituary, 27 January) in the early 1950s. I recall that he played Marlowe's Dr Faustus with mesmeric power when only 15 or 16. In a very unsympathetic school-hall setting, he captivated a sparse opening-night audience. So riveting was his performance that word went round and the three following performances were packed, with some unable to get in.

At an Easter school camp in Wales, he and I did our best to entertain as a "Ventriloquist Act With a Difference", he being a convincing dummy, I the ventriloquist, but sitting on his knee.

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian.

Letter: Nicol Williamson obituary | Stage | The Guardian

Nick

Letter: Nicol Williamson obituary
Bill Gaskill
The Guardian, Sunday 29 January 2012


It was Anthony Page, not Tony Richardson, who directed Nicol Williamson (obituary, 27 January) in Inadmissible Evidence. Anthony was entirely responsible for launching Nicol's career and persuaded John Osborne to accept Nicol, who was only 28, in the part of a man 20 years older. He also persuaded me to cast him in his first part on the London stage, in Henry Chapman's That's Us, though I had never seen nor met him.

[sippog]

Williamson had a huge impact on me as a teenager when I saw him in The Bofors Gun - a searing performance that stayed with me for a long time. He could show flair and rare psychological insight as an actor, even in a pot-boiler like The Wilby Conspiracy where he uncannily captures the arrogant and patronising attitude of an Afrikaner policeman towards black people. Unfortunately I don't think a lot of his later material was worthy of him.

I've started recently listening to his audio-book reading of The Hobbit (worth tracking down) and found myself thoroughly drawn in. Some of the accent choices for characters are 'interesting': Bilbo talks in mummerset, the Dwarves are all northerners, and Orcs have a slightly bizarre Italian or Mexican flavour. But his interpretation of Gollum - a fluting, Welsh tinged, hissing voice outside his normal register - is absolutely brilliant.

The Gollum episode is the most memorable and effective bit of the book - or was to me as a child - and, with all respect to Andy Serkis' idiot child version, this is the voice I heard in my head when I read it.

[didi-5]

I haven't heard about The Hobbit but it sounds fascinating ...

Did anyone read Nicol's, er, novel from the 1990s called 'Ming's Kingdom'? If you have then I can guess your current reaction - I must admit it had left my memory bank completely until a couple of days after the announcement of his death. If you haven't, then unless muddled chronologies and porn are your thing you haven't missed much. The wonder is HOW the thing got published in the first place!

[sippog]

In case anyone else is curious about The Hobbit:

[didi-5]

My tribute to Nicol on my blog:

For Merlin: a tribute to Nicol Williamson « LouReviews