R.I.P. Kenneth Mackintosh

[Reza]

London Guardian

Kenneth Mackintosh
Actor and National Theatre director
Michael Coveney
Monday November 13 2006
The Guardian


Kenneth Mackintosh, who has died aged 87, was the only actor or director to have maintained a continuous working relationship with the National Theatre since its inception under Laurence Olivier in the 1960s. Well known in repertory theatres after the second world war, and on television, Mackintosh joined the National in February 1964 as an actor; he was first cast as Lodovico in Olivier's Othello, as well as in key supporting roles in The Dutch Courtesan and The Royal Hunt of the Sun. In 1968, he became one of Olivier's most trusted staff directors.

He was, says Lady Olivier (the actor Joan Plowright), "an absolute backbone" to the company. He was appointed senior staff director by Peter Hall, Olivier's successor, and continued in that post through the Richard Eyre regime until, in retirement, he was made consultant staff director in 1993.

Latterly, he had been helping to arrange "described" performances for visually impaired audiences, directing the actors and supporting the describers. He attended most first nights at the NT until recently, and was a regular at the Friday staff meeting, held each week in the NT's Green Room by the current director, Nicholas Hytner.

Mackintosh was born and educated in Dorset and went to Clayesmore school as a boarder. On the death of his father, who worked for Shell Oil, he went to work for Wolsey, the knitwear manufacturers, in Leicester, where he also joined the Little Theatre, a famous amateur company.

On the outbreak of war, he joined the RAF but was shot down in August 1941 and captured. In Stalag Luft III (the Great Escape camp), he and another group of prisoners designed and built their own 400-seater theatre from tea chests that had contained Red Cross food parcels. He was in charge, and proved it by playing Lady Macbeth.

He returned to England on VE Day and, soon after, the Air Council got a group of air crew ex-prisoners together to stage a musical revue Back Home in aid of the Red Cross at the old Stoll (now the Peacock) Theatre. Mackintosh directed a cast that included Rupert Davies, Peter Butterworth, George Cole, Roy Dotrice and Alec Lewis.

His career got seriously underway with seasons at Glasgow Citizens, Bristol Old Vic and Birmingham Rep where, in the mid 1950s, he became friends with Albert Finney. In 1976, Mackintosh appeared at the NT in Peter Hall's production of Tamburlaine the Great, starring Finney.

As a staff director at the NT he worked with more than 40 different directors, a tribute, surely, to his affability and powers of tolerance. He often preferred those sometimes seen as "difficult" and cited John Dexter and Peter Wood as examples. He was an assistant producer to Michael Blakemore on his legendary productions of Long Day's Journey Into Night (with Olivier and Constance Cummings) and The Front Page in 1971 and 1972, and in 1973 assisted Dexter on the production of Peter Shaffer's Equus.

His notable NT acting roles included Claudius in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967); Le Beau in the all-male As You Like It (1967) directed by Clifford Williams; Kulyigin, the schoolmaster, in Chekhov's Three Sisters directed by Olivier, also in 1967; and Signor Vanni in Michael Gambon's Galileo (1980) directed by Dexter.

Complications from his war wounds led to the amputation of one leg in 1981, but the disability was scarcely noticeable and rarely mentioned. Mackintosh is survived by his wife, Anne, and three sons.

Kenneth Mackintosh, actor and director, born November 19 1919; died October 29 2006