Kevin Colson

Kevin Colson (28 August 1937 – 18 April 2018) was an Australian actor who worked across stage, film, and television throughout a career spanning several decades. Born in Sydney, where his father and brother worked as taxi drivers, Colson built his early professional life in Australia before relocating to London and eventually earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his Broadway appearance in 1990. Singer-songwriter Sia is his niece, the daughter of his brother Phil B. Colson, a singer, guitarist, and composer.

Colson's career began in Australian broadcasting, where he worked as a television announcer on a Sunday religious program before becoming the compère for the Seven Network and hosting Room for Two in 1959. His stage work began in 1960 with a role as a rancher in The Pleasure of His Company at the Theatre Royal, followed by a part in The Glass Menagerie for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in Sydney in 1961. That same year he took on his first professional musical role, starring opposite Judy Bruce in the French musical Irma La Douce. In October 1962 he starred as the hero in Carnival at Her Majesty's Theatre, and in 1963 he played the juvenile lead in Noël Coward's Sail Away at the same venue, with Coward himself overseeing rehearsals. His 1964 work with the Union Theatre Repertory Company — later the Melbourne Theatre Company — included the title role in Hamlet, Nick in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a part in the Australian premiere of Arthur Miller's After the Fall, and a role in And the Big Men Fly.

In 1965, Colson moved to London with the intention of training, but was immediately cast as Robert Browning in Robert and Elizabeth at the Lyric Theatre, replacing Keith Michell in the role, which he performed for a year and a half. He subsequently played Cliff Bradshaw opposite Judi Dench's Sally Bowles in the original London production of Cabaret at the Palace Theatre. Colson then stepped away from acting in 1969, and from 1970 to 1985 he ran an oil business and a television production company, neither of which succeeded. His return to the stage came in 1985 with a production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, after which he appeared as CIA agent Walter DeCourcey in the original London production of Tim Rice's Chess.

In 1989, Colson was cast in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love alongside Ann Crumb, playing Sir George Dillingham. He had originally been engaged as the understudy for Roger Moore in the role, but Moore withdrew from the production a month before opening due to concerns about his own singing voice, and Colson stepped into the part. When the production transferred to Broadway in 1990, Colson received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Subsequent stage work included Noah in Children of Eden at the Prince Edward Theatre in London in 1991 and Max von Mayerling in the Sydmonton Festival workshop of Sunset Boulevard that same year. In 1998 he appeared as a supporting lead in Maddie and played Daddy Warbucks in Annie. He portrayed Joey Bishop in Rat Pack Confidential at the Whitehall Theatre in 2003, appeared in The Woman in White with Roger Allam that same year, and played the butler Adolfo in Murderous Instincts at the Savoy Theatre in 2004. In 2006 he took on lead roles in Dominic Mitchell's Acquaintances. He appeared in numerous productions at the Finborough Theatre in London, among them The Destiny of Me in 2002, Allport's Revenge in 2004, Van Badham's The Gabriels and Blackwater Angel and Mass Appeal in 2006, The Beautiful People in 2008, and His Greatness in 2010. He played Rodion in Old World in 2007. His final stage appearance came in 2014 in The Last Confession in Sydney, alongside David Suchet.

Colson's film credits include Khartoum, Star, Nightwatch, and Trapped in Space. His television work encompassed roles in Man at the Top, Spytrap, First Among Equals, The Woman He Loved, Poor Little Rich Girl, Executive Stress, and Crossroads. He also appeared on the 1988 EMI recording of Jerome Kern's Show Boat, conducted by John McGlinn. In 2003, Colson stated that he had become homeless after selling his Australian property and transferring his house to his former wife, to whom he had been married briefly following his initial retirement from acting in 1969.