Michael Pennington

Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington, born on 7 June 1943 in Cambridge, England, is an English actor, director, and writer. The son of Vivian Maynard Cecil Pennington and Euphemia Willock, née Fyfe, he grew up in London. Pennington was educated at Marlborough College, became a member of the National Youth Theatre, and subsequently read English at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Upon graduating, Pennington joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966. Among his early roles was Fortinbras in David Warner's 1965 production of Hamlet. He then departed the RSC for eight years, working in London theatre in productions including John Mortimer's The Judge, Christopher Hampton's Savages, and Tony Richardson's Hamlet with Nicol Williamson, as well as appearing in numerous television dramas. He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure, launching a sustained association with the company as a leading actor. During this period he played Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost, Edgar in King Lear, and appeared in new works by David Rudkin, David Edgar, and Howard Brenton, as well as classical works by Sean O'Casey, Euripides, and William Congreve. This chapter of his RSC work culminated in his own performance of Hamlet in 1980 and 1981. His Broadway appearance came in 1969, when he performed in Hamlet.

At the National Theatre in 1984, Pennington appeared in Tolstoy's Strider, earning an Olivier Award nomination, and also performed in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd. That same period saw him play Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov's adaptation of Crime and Punishment and Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in London's West End. He also took the title role in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex on BBC television in 1985 and premiered his solo show Anton Chekhov, which he has continued to tour internationally.

In 1986, Pennington co-founded the English Shakespeare Company alongside director Michael Bogdanov and served as its Joint Artistic Director until 1992. He starred in the company's inaugural productions of The Henrys and, in 1987, the seven-play history cycle The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide and was televised. His roles within the ESC included Richard II, Prince Hal and Henry V, and Jack Cade, the last earning him an Olivier Award nomination. In subsequent ESC seasons he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale and the title roles in Macbeth and Coriolanus, the latter also receiving an Olivier Award nomination. He directed Twelfth Night for the ESC and subsequently staged the production for the Haiyuza Theatre Company in Tokyo and for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

Pennington's West End work in the 1990s encompassed a wide range of roles, including Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet, Major Arnold in Ronald Harwood's Taking Sides, Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecency, Sir John Brute in Farquhar's The Provok'd Wife, Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's Waste, Trigorin in The Seagull, and the title role in Molière's The Misanthrope. He appeared opposite Judi Dench for the third time in Peter Shaffer's The Gift of the Gorgon in 1992, in which the two played a married couple. At the first Harold Pinter Festival in Dublin, he performed in Pinter's Old Times and One for the Road. In 1998, he participated in a workshop run by Sir Peter Hall at the National Theatre Studio.

His stage work in the 2000s included the title role in The Guardsman in the West End, David Mamet's The Shawl at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield, Walter Burns in The Front Page at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and the title roles in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III. He directed A Midsummer Night's Dream at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2003 and The Hamlet Project for the National Theatre in Bucharest the same year. In 2005 he appeared in David Greig's The Cosmonaut's Last Message at the Donmar Warehouse and took the title role in Nathan the Wise at the Hampstead Theatre. He portrayed a succession of historical figures in subsequent years, including Sidney Cockerell in The Best of Friends, Robert Maxwell in Ian Curteis's The Bargain, Charles Dickens in Simon Gray's Little Nell, Wilhelm Furtwängler in Taking Sides, and Richard Strauss in Ronald Harwood's Collaboration at Chichester and in the West End in 2008 and 2009.

In 2006, Pennington premiered his second solo show, Sweet William, devoted to Shakespeare. He worked with director Peter Brook for the first time in 2009 on Love is My Sin, which toured Europe and played in New York. At Chichester he returned in 2010 to play the title role in Ibsen's The Master Builder, and in 2011 appeared as Dr Fabio in Eduardo de Filippo's The Syndicate opposite Ian McKellen. His 2012 Chichester season saw him play Antony in Antony and Cleopatra opposite Kim Cattrall. Later notable stage work included Edgar in Strindberg's The Dance of Death at the Gate Theatre, John of Gaunt in Richard II for the RSC, Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennett's Single Spies at the Rose Theatre Kingston, and the title role in King Lear for Theatre for a New Audience in New York in 2014. In 2015, he performed Sweet William at the Festival Shakespeare Buenos Aires and Festival Shakespeare Uruguay.

In 1983, Pennington appeared as Moff Jerjerrod in the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi. He played Michael Foot in The Iron Lady alongside Meryl Streep, and portrayed Professor Moriarty in two BBC Radio dramatizations, The Final Problem in 1992 and The Empty House in 1993. He is the author of multiple books, including Are You There, Crocodile?, three books on individual Shakespeare plays, Sweet William: Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare, and Let Me Play the Lion Too: How to Be an Actor, published by Faber and Faber. In April 2004, he became the second actor, after Harley Granville-Barker in 1925, to deliver the British Academy's annual Shakespeare lecture, titled Barnadine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail. Pennington holds the position of Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has directed in the United Kingdom, the United States, Romania, and Japan.