McDowell Pays NT Tribute to Film-maker Anderson

Malcolm McDowell takes to the stage of the National’s Cottesloe Theatre on 2 and 4 November in Lindsay Anderson: A Personal Remembrance, to pay tribute to the late, esteemed film and theatre director who first brought him to prominence.

The event commemorates the tenth anniversary of the death of Anderson and is drawn from writings by and about Anderson, as well as encounters with such colleagues as Alan Bates, Bette Davis, John Ford, John Gielgud, Lilian Gish, Richard Harris, Laurence Olivier, Rachel Roberts and David Storey. It is directed by Mike Kaplan, who produced Anderson’s final feature, The Whales of August.

McDowell, who began his acting career as an RSC extra and had a couple of television appearances under his belt in the series Crossroads and Sat’day While Sunday, achieved his breakthrough in Anderson’s 1968 film If., and continued to work with the director for the next 20 years on stage and screen, most notably on two further instalments of what came to be known as the Mick Travis Trilogy, after his character’s name in If — O Lucky Man in 1973, for which he was also credited for the original idea and uncredited as producer, and Britannia Hospital in 1982.

McDowell and his then-wife Mary Steenburgen (whom he met on his Hollywood movie debut on Time after Time in 1979) also co-starred in Anderson’s stage production of Philip Barry’s Holiday at the Old Vic in January 1987, in a cast that also included Cherie Lunghi and Frank Grimes. McDowell’s other stage work includes starring in the 1975 production of Joe Oton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane that transferred from the Royal Court to the Duke of York’s, and New York appearances in a 1981 revival of Osborne ‘s Look Back in Anger and David Storey’s In Celebration, the latter also directed by Anderson. McDowell’s extensive body of film work outside his collaborations with Anderson included the lead in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange.

By – Mark Shenton