I notice that Tom Stoppard has spoken recently of the late John Wood as “truly my favourite actor”.
I first saw him in the debut production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Old Vic in the 1960s. Then, brilliantly, in Travesties, which was written by Stoppard for him.
But for me he was the indelible Lear.
I had first seen King Lear as a teenager at school, directed by the extraordinary Gordon Braddy and starring David Allister (then David MacDonald). But I was far too immature to get it then (as I do so personally now).
So when I became involved with Sam Wanamaker and Shakespeare’s Globe, I made up for lost time, seeing a dozen or more different Lears in eighteen months, many of them our most celebrated actors. It was John Wood at the RSC in 1990 that seemed to me to be Lear.
He died aged 81 a year ago this month. A great actor, but no celeb.
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