The Stage

Peter Rocca

Published Tuesday 5 January 2010 at 12:40 by John Spradbery

Peter Rocca (Palumba) passed away in Hampstead’s Royal Free Hospital on October 13, never regaining consciousness after pneumonia, heart and multiple breathing problems. He was 72 years old.

Peter, known to a select band of friends as Rocca was of part Italian descent, with aunts and cousins still living in Italy just outside Naples. Despite his partial Italian background, he was essentially in the mould of an English gentleman actor.

In his early years, Rocca was an outstanding young actor destined for a promising future. He won an early scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, joining an elite band of young actors including John Thaw and John Hurt. At RADA, among such a generation of students in the late fifties, he himself won an outstanding student award.

I met Peter back in 1979 or 1980, coming to my rescue when I needed a curtain-raiser for a show I was doing at the Shaftesbury Theatre. He performed Chekhov’s famous monologue, On the Harmfulness of Tobacco. He went on years later to play other Chekhov roles at the now well-established south London fringe theatre, the Brockley Jack, which he was very much instrumental in bringing into existence with a distinguished group of drinking pals and actors from south London. The pub theatre has since built up a notable theatrical reputation. In the theatre’s early days he also played John Aubrey in Brief Lives, and Scrooge in a unique seasonal production of A Christmas Carol. I also later recall seeing him in a delightful scene-stealing performance in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at a fringe theatre in Highgate.

After RADA he was an understudy with the RSC, Old Vic and National Theatre companies touring Australia, the USA and, as I understand from an other friend of his, a memorable visit to Russia when it was the Soviet Union.

He lived his last years in a fine block of flats overlooking Regent’s Park, and was an enthusiastic and frequent visitor to London Zoo. Rocca was a longtime member of London’s Savage Club, cherishing his membership there among many other distinguished members. A keen military historian, in later life he obtained a degree in humanities through the Open University. An amateur artist, his oil paintings impressed with a flair and passionate use of colour.