Brian Bedford, who has died aged 80, was, said the New York Times in 2011, “the finest English-language interpreter of classical comedy of his generation” – a reputation forged over 50 years, mostly on Broadway and also at the Stratford Ontario Festival theatre in Canada, where he more or less settled. On neither side of the Atlantic has anyone played more of the leading Shakespearean roles than Bedford. But he also specialised in high comedy, and Molière. He last appeared on Broadway, in 2011, as an acclaimed Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest.
As a shining star in the West End of London in the late 1950s and early 60s, Bedford decided to escape a gilded social and theatrical milieu in which he felt uneasy, for America. He first went to New York in 1959, in John Gielgud’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Five Finger Exercise, which was welcomed by Kenneth Tynan as “the most accomplished new play in a wretched season”.
Continue reading...