Tributes paid to Michael Pennington, who has died aged 82

Michael Pennington, the British actor and theatre director, has died aged 82.

He was born on 7 June 1943, joining the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation, where he remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966.

He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure, going on to play Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Edgar in King Lear, and the title role in Hamlet in 1980 to 81.

The RSC published a statement today, saying: “We are incredibly sad to hear that RSC Honorary Associate Artist Michael Pennington passed away at the age of 82 yesterday. A Shakespearean to his very bones, Michael’s long and distinguished career with us spanned an astonishing 50 years.

“Our thoughts go to all those who knew him. He first joined the RSC after graduating from Cambridge University in John Barton’s 1964/65 Wars of The Roses’ cycle. Best known for his Hamlet in 1980, his final appearance here was in 2012, playing John of Gaunt alongside David Tennant in Greg Doran’s staging of Richard II.

In 1986 Pennington co-founded the English Shakespeare Company with director Michael Bogdanov and served as its joint artistic director until 1992. The company mounted a seven-play history cycle, The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide and was televised. Pennington played Richard II, Prince Hal/Henry V and Jack Cade, and received Olivier Award nominations for that cycle and for his subsequent title roles in Macbeth and Coriolanus.

At the National Theatre he appeared in Tolstoy’s Strider in 1984, for which he received a further Olivier nomination, and in Otway’s Venice Preserv’d. He also played Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov’s adaptation of Crime and Punishment and Henry in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing in the West End.

Later stage work included Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett’s Single Spies, and the title role in King Lear for Theatre for a New Audience in New York in 2014, as well as The Tempest at Jermyn Street Theatre. He also developed solo shows on Chekhov and Shakespeare which he toured internationally for many years.

In 2004 he became only the second actor, after Harley Granville-Barker in 1925, to deliver the British Academy’s annual Shakespeare lecture. He also wrote ten books, including guides to several Shakespeare plays and a memoir. He is survived by his son, Mark.