Ex-EastEnders star and prolific theatre actor Frank Barrie dies aged 88
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Frank Barrie obituary
There is a dying breed of classically trained, romantic, heroic actors who should not be consigned to oblivion in theatrical memory, and Frank Barrie, who has died aged 88, is a notable example. The youngest leading actor at the Bristol Old Vic in the late 1960s, Barrie was always part of that noble tradition, one that stemmed from William Macready and Edmund Kean in the earlier Victorian era. A current reminder of it comes in Ralph Fiennes's intriguing evocation of Henry Irving in David Hare's new play Grace Pervades, but it is now largely forgotten. Barrie scored his biggest international success in a solo show about Macready (titled Macready!), which he wrote himself and which opened at the Northcott theatre, Exeter, in 1979 and then, after a triumphant season on Broadway, at the Arts in London. It subsequently toured in 65 countries. He put the extravagance and what might be unkindly dubbed 'affectation' of Macready, a great Shakespearean actor, into a contemporary perspective, with due acknowledgement of his attempts to modernise the theatre, a profession of which Macready was openly, and paradoxically, contemptuous. Two chairs, a table and a cloak were all it took. Barrie was delightful company, full of memories and anecdotes, rather like his contemporary stylists, Keith Baxter and John Fraser, who, unlike him, both committed their reminiscent stories to print. Tall and strikingly handsome, he impressed, as the critic Michael Ratcliffe once said, as a character actor of elegance, sympathy and wit. Another critic, Harold Hobson, while praising his Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet at the Bristol Old Vic as 'splendidly manly and romantic', added that few Mercutios could have lived with more swagger or died with more panache, or bitterness, than his. And yet his highest profile performance as far as today's public were concerned was probably that of Dot Cotton's smooth gentleman friend, Edward Bishop, in EasteEnders on television in 20101. Bishop was a local choirmaster whom Dot (June Brown) befriended but shied away from – when Bishop tried to up the affectionate tempo – on the reasonable grounds of her still being married. There were other television appearances – as Coriolanus and King Lear for RTE in Dublin in the early 70s; in the BBC's Doctors soap (2008 and 2012, different characters); as Eglamour in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1984); and in a screen version of Macready! in 1985. But Barrie's natural habitat was the stage. He was born Frank Smith in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, as the third child of Annie (nee Carter) and Arthur, a press photographer. The family moved to York after their house was bombed in the second world war. He attended Archbishop Holgate's school in the city, and took part in the York Mystery Plays before taking a degree in English at Hull University, where he was president of the debating society and where he met a fellow student, Mary Lloyd, whom he married in 1960. There followed four years in weekly and fortnightly rep – in Harrogate, Ipswich, Salisbury and Sheringham, Norfolk – changing his surname to Barrie (in memory of an admired actor, John Barrie) on the advice of an agent before joining the Bristol Old Vic in 1965. Over several seasons there he played Oedipus Rex, Richard II, Long John Silver, Alfie (in Bill Naughton's play), Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Lucio in a Tyrone Guthrie production of Measure for Measure. In 10 years he had acquired a huge range of experience, and a complete skill set for the opportunity that now arose to join Laurence Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1969. He was recommended to Olivier by his assistant, Donald MacKechnie, who had worked with Barrie on Macready! He auditioned for, and was immediately cast as, Mirabell in Congreve's Restoration masterpiece The Way of the World (opposite Geraldine McEwan), then Wendoll in Thomas Heywood's stark Jacobean domestic tragedy, A Woman Killed with Kindness, Brachiano in John Webster's glittering The White Devil, Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (Olivier as Shylock, Joan Plowright as Portia, Jonathan Miller director) and Barelli in Pirandello's Rules of the Games, adapted by Hare, with Plowright and Paul Scofield. In the 70s he played Hamlet and Richard III for the director Richard Digby Day at the Theatre Royal, York, where he returned in 1984 as a tremendous Morose, the grumpy old noise-hating character, in Ben Jonson's Epicœne, or The Silent Woman. Also, in the York Minster, he played Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and, in Regent's Park, London, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. His later London credits included Royce Ryton's Motherdear (1980) at the Ambassadors, a right royal predecessor of The Crown, set in Sandringham House between 1888 and 1922, in which he stalked magnificently as the prime minister Lord Rosebery opposite Margaret Lockwood as the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra; another Way of the World at the Haymarket in 1984, playing the adulterous, conniving Fainall in a superb revival by William Gaskill headlined by Maggie Smith and Plowright, and a 1991 revival at Wyndham's of Christopher Hampton's inverted Molière-sque comedy, The Philanthropist, as the self-centred bestselling novelist Braham, alongside Edward Fox and Tim Brooke-Taylor. Two delightful, nostalgic gems in tiny London theatres marked his farewell to the stage: as Noël Coward in Chris Burgess's Lunch with Marlene (Kate O'Mara as a slinky Dietrich) at the New End in Hampstead in 2009, and – a real collector's item – as the financier Sir Claude Burton in Ivor Novello's last musical, Gay's the Word (lyrics by Alan Melville) at the Jermyn Street theatre in 2013. Frank and Mary lived in Brockley, south London, for their last 40 years. He is survived by Mary, their daughter, Julia, grandchildren Becky and Dudley, great-granddaughter Pearl and his older siblings, Nancy and Harold. Frank Barrie (Frank Smith), actor, born 19 September 1936; died 30 June 2025
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
Like a rolling stone, the marvellous Girl From The North Country has rocked back up at the Old Vic theatre...and 8 years on, it's even better than the first time round, says Georgina Brown
Girl From The North Country (Old Vic, London) Verdict: Knocking on Heaven's Door Rating: Conor McPherson's play set in 1930's depression era America is thrice blessed: by McPherson's extraordinary talent as a writer and director for creating a mood; by a remarkable ensemble of actors-singers-dancers playing the failures, fugitives and afflicted who inhabit his play; and by a soundtrack of 23 of Bob Dylan 's songs. He is the only playwright whom Dylan has favoured with such an opportunity. Beautifully integrated and transformed by Simon Hale's bewitching arrangements, the music seems to express the near inexpressible emotions of lost souls blowing in the wind. Revived at the Old Vic, where it started life in 2017, it is even more potent this time round. Back then, we wondered if it would work. Now we know it's a work of wonder. McPherson gathers his misfits in a run-down boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota. Best known for his haunting play, The Weir, he has a feel for lives trailed by the ghosts of dreams turned to dust. On Rae Smith's sepia-toned set, hotelier Nick (Colin Connor) is preparing stew for his guests, all in a rut or on the run. Dementia has robbed his wife Elizabeth of all inhibitions. An outstanding Katy Brayben sings like an angel, stamps like a rock star and dances like a whirling dervish. Meanwhile, Nick is failing to persuade his teenage pregnant black daughter Marianne (Justina Kehinde, marvellous) to accept a 70-year-old widower's offer of marriage. His wannabe-writer son Gene is drowning in rejection slips and drink. His widowed mistress (sparkling Maria Omakinwa) is plotting a way out. The respectable couple with a simple son are hiding something. There's nothing godly about Eugene McCoy's Bible-seller - but there's a true gentleness about Sifiso Mazibuko's once award-winning boxer. The first half finishes with a beautiful, heart-chilling, choral rendition of Like A Rolling Stone but this time, unlike the original production, the evening ends with a redemptive Moving On. Special, and not to be missed. Girl From The North Country is at the Old Vic until August 23. Nye (Olivier, National Theatre) Verdict: The end is Nye Rating: The end is Nye for Rufus Norris as Artistic Director of the National Theatre. His legacy show is a relaunch of last year's play by Tim Price starring Welsh superman Michael Sheen as the Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan — the man who pushed through the foundation of the NHS after the Second World War. It commemorates his life, by recreating key scenes from it, while Nye hallucinates on morphine following surgery for a peptic ulcer in 1959. (The surgery revealed that he was actually dying of cancer.) Price has tweaked the play somewhat but it remains a two-hour 40-minute piece of high-spirited political hagiography. We learn of early experience fighting a speech impediment in an 'I am Spartacus' moment of school room collective action. You could even call it class war. But Nye really finds his voice in Tredegar Council, before becoming the Member for Ebbw Vale in Parliament and getting up the nose of both Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill. At one point, the ghost of his father takes him down the mines to show him how to bring down the most coal by 'striking' in the right place. With Sheen wearing pyjamas throughout, and the huge green hospital curtains of Vicki Mortimer's stage design acting as veils of consciousness, Norris's production is certainly ingenious. Yet its invention masks a deeply nostalgic and deferential attitude. What could have been a coruscating indictment of today's low-alcohol left feels more like an obsequious and sentimental epitaph. National Theatre, London, until August 16; Wales Millennium Centre August 22-30.
Time Out
15-07-2025
- Time Out
Lenny Henry, Minnie Driver, Sue Perkins and Ambika Mod are starring in this summer's must see London play
Playwright Duncan Macmillan is the king of the slow burner: his 2011 fringe play Lungs debuted in 2011 in semi-obscurity until eight years later it was revived in a massive Old Vic production starring Matt Smith and Clare Foy. Now his 2014 play Every Brilliant Thing goes a few years better – finally making its debut in the West End this summer. The play is a deeply touching, often very funny monologue about an unnamed narrator who has – since childhood – obsessively kept a list of every single thing they think is good about the world (no matter how trivial), initially as a way of cheering their mum up, but later themself. It's an intimate show about living with depression that has been translated into dozens of languages but has rarely been seen in big theatres. But next month Every Brilliant Thing finally makes the leap to the West End's newest and most intimate theatre @sohoplace. You'll be able to see it performed by Jonny Donahoe, who co-created it and has done most previous UK performances. But he's getting a little celebrity help. Quite a lot, in fact: there will be five performers taking on the the show this time. In August Donahoe and Lenny Henry will be splitting the role (to be clear there will be a single performer per show, with Henry taking on the lion's share); during September it'll be Sue Perkins and rising star Ambika Mod; and for just added October dates Henry and Donahoe will return for a bit before Hollywood actor Minnie Driver takes over for the end of the run. An intimate play that relies heavily on the audience and the personality of the performer, the revival promises to be quite the treat, and a real pick me up for the London's traditionally sleepy August theatre scene.
