The Finest Actor of Us All

Published Monday 23 June 2008 at 13:05

For a book about the life and work of Wilfrid Lawson, I am seeking recollections of two of his stage performances in the fifties - in Strindberg’s The Father, the production which brought him back into the public eye after a decade of absence from the West End, and The Wooden Dish, a then-new American play directed by Joseph Losey.

My hope is that there are people who will read this request who have vivid memories of what he actually did on stage - of what it was that made his work in those two productions so captivating. Both of them had short runs and many who saw them have left us, but I hope that there are others who treasure their memories of them, and are willing to share them with me for possible inclusion in The Finest Actor of Us All.

That phrase, which forms the book’s title, was the one used by Peter O’Toole in 1964 when he introduced Lawson to Her Majesty the Queen at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party to mark the quatercentenary of the birth of Shakespeare

Please send letters to Peter Smith, Appartement Cinsault, La Bâtisse, 10 avenue Minervoise, 11700 La Redorte, France. All letters will be acknowledged, and the writers of those which are used will be thanked in the book. I can also be reached by email at ps22@columbia.edu

Peter Smith

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