The Stage

Peter Needham

Published Tuesday 17 November 2009 at 12:20 by Michael Quinn

As a regular presence on the National Theatre’s stages over the past three decades, Peter Needham featured in many of the most iconic, and occasionally controversial, productions seen in the company’s original Old Vic base and subsequently at its new home on London’s South Bank.

He joined the National in 1970 after extensive repertory experience and a three-year stint in Canada, following a tour with the Old Vic. He was a versatile stalwart of Peter Hall’s regime at the NT, making notable appearances in Hall’s Albert Finney-led productions of Hamlet and Tamburlaine in the mid-seventies, the John Schlesinger-directed Julius Caesar with John Gielgud, The Duchess of Malfi with Ian McKellen and, most notoriously, in Howard Brenton’s headline-grabbing The Romans in Britain. His last appearance with the company was in Katie Mitchell’s Iphigenia at Aulis in 2004.

Born in Nottingham on August 20, 1932, Needham won several awards as an amateur actor before training at RADA, after which he made his debut with the Mevagissey repertory company in Cornwall. Following his Canadian sojourn, he returned to the UK in 1962 and maintained a steady presence in regional reps.

In 1984 he co-founded Not the National Theatre, the first British company to tour to Romania and the former Czechoslovakia, and with whom Needham also directed. He was a prominent member of Cheek by Jowl in the early nineties and with Patricia Doyle wrote and performed in a portrait of DH Lawrence, Son and Lover.

He died on August 7, just days short of his 77th birthday and is survived by his third wife and by four daughters from his first two marriages.