John Shrapnel obit

John Shrapnel, versatile and intelligent actor on stage, film and television – obituary

He had roles in Gladiator and Notting Hill while the psychological depth of his stage roles often made up for directorial deficiencies

 

He was not on the list.

John Shrapnel, who has died aged 77, was a fiercely intelligent and commanding actor with a busy career in theatre, film and television and radio – the kind of performer, Robert Harris once observed in the Telegraph, “who you recognise and appreciate whenever he appears … without ever being entirely sure who he is”.

Shrapnel played leading or important supporting roles in numerous RSC and National Theatre productions, making his debut in the latter as the “dear extravagant rogue” Charles Surface in Jonathan Miller’s 1972 NT production of The School for Scandal, the Telegraph’s reviewer John Barber praising his depiction of a “sweaty, unkempt young fellow, straight out of The Rake’s Progress”.

His other roles with the company included Banquo in Macbeth, Pentheus in The Bacchae and Orsino in Twelfth Night.

At the RSC he was Agamemnon in The Greeks (1980); Oedipus in Oedipus Rex (1989); Angelo in Measure for Measure (1990); Creon in Adrian Noble’s flawed production of the Theban plays of Sophocles in 1991-92 – in which role, enthused The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer, he “persuasively [captured] the moral ambiguities” of the ruler of Thebes; and Claudius in Noble’s Hamlet the following year.

On the big screen he made his debut as a factory worker in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). He was the psychiatrist who analyses Richard E Grant’s mentally unstable advertising executive in How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989); a dog-hunting taxidermist in 101 Dalmatians (1996); Anna’s (Julia Roberts’s) UK press agent in Notting Hill (1999); Senator Gaius in Gladiator (2000); a Russian admiral in K-19: The Widowmaker (2001, with Harrison Ford); Nestor in Troy (2004); Lord Howard to Cate Blanchett’s monarch in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007); and General Grey in The Duchess (2008, with Keira Knightley).

That year, as the occultist Aleister Crowley in the Hammer horror tribute Chemical Wedding, Shrapnel turned in what the Telegraph’s critic Tim Robey described as “the hammiest performance I’ve ever seen”.

On television he took major roles in Jonathan Miller’s BBC Shakespeare series of the 1980s, as Alcibiades in Timon of Athens, Hector in Troilus and Cressida and Kent to Michael Hordern’s King Lear. He was the Earl of Sussex in Elizabeth R (1971, with Glenda Jackson) played Alec Hardinge, private secretary to Edward VIII in Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978) and Sir Percival Glyde in the miniseries The Woman in White (1982).

He featured in numerous popular series including Inspector Morse (also voicing Colin Dexter’s detective on BBC Radio 4 in the 1990s), Waking the Dead, and Foyle’s War.

 

He guest-starred in Midsomer Murders, playing a choir member accused of singing flat by Peter Capaldi in “Death in Chorus” (2006) and a distinguished writer and guest speaker found dead in his hotel room as a result of poisoning in “Written in Blood” (1998).

Reviewers often remarked that Shrapnel’s intelligence and the psychological depth he brought to his roles made up for any directorial deficiencies.

In 2011 when he took the role of Charles Surface’s uncle Sir Oliver Surface in what one critic described as Deborah Warner’s “uncharacteristically duff production” of The School for Scandal at the Barbican, he brought a robust 18th-century sense of fun to an otherwise “lumbering, misguided attempt to breathe fresh life into Sheridan’s 1777 tale of London society”. Shrapnel, the critic felt, should be given a medal.

Similarly, the Sunday Times critic reckoned his performances as the Ghost and Claudius in Sarah Frankcom’s 2014 gender-bending production of Hamlet at Manchester Royal Exchange, starring Maxine Peake in the title role, were the best reasons to see the play: “Playing the apparition of Hamlet’s father, he quickly exhumes layers of pain and horror that are beyond Peake, in her urchin boots, to pursue.

“His Claudius, besuited, but with a gorilla’s stoop and low-hanging arms, exudes an easy menace, and has a voice that certainly sounds as if it’s known ‘the rank sweat of an enseamed bed’ or two.”

John Morley Shrapnel was born in Birmingham on April 27 1942 to Norman and Myfanwy Shrapnel. His father, on active service in the RAF at the time of his birth, went on to join the Manchester Guardian as reporter, book reviewer and theatre critic, becoming the paper’s (and the later Guardian’s) parliamentary correspondent from 1958 to 1975.

An ancestor, Lt Gen Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842), invented the Shrapnel artillery shell – designed to explode – giving his name to the metal fragments produced.

John was educated at Mile End school, Stockport, and the City of London School, where he played Hamlet.

At St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, he became active in student productions, taking the title role in Oedipus the King, opposite Miriam Margolyes’s Jocasta, at the Cambridge Guildhall in 1963, the Telegraph’s WA Darlington praising his “voice, presence and authority”.

The same year he was “impressive” as the bar-lounger, rebel and general misfit title character in a student production of Henry Miller’s Just Wild About Harry at the Edinburgh Festival.

He made his professional debut as Claudio in Much Ado about Nothing at the new Nottingham Playhouse in 1965, beginning a long stage career which included the roles of Andrey in Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Cambridge Theatre, 1976); Tesman in Hedda Gabler with Janet Suzman (Duke of York’s Theatre, 1977), and Brutus in Julius Caesar (Riverside Studios, 1980). In 1995 at Chichester, he was “splendidly sinister” as Gibbs, assistant to Harold Pinter’s mustachioed Colonel in Pinter’s The Hothouse.

In 2005 he played the title role in Deborah Warner’s production of Julius Caesar at the Barbican, stepping on to the stage, wrote one critic “like a [Mafia] godfather alighting from a yacht.” As Gloucester to Pete Postlethwaite’s Lear at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool in 2008, Charles Spencer found that he had “all the tragic grandeur and dignity which Postlethwaite largely lacks”.

In 2012 Shrapnel took the central role in Andrew Hilton’s production of the same play at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, presenting a vigorous, silver-haired autocrat who morphs by degrees from swagger to despair.

Filmography

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1971      Nicholas and Alexandra Petya    

1972      Pope Joan            Father James     

1975      Hennessy            Tipaldi  

1987      Personal Services             Lionel   

Partition               General Flood   

1988      Testimony           Andrei Zhdanov               

1989      How to Get Ahead in Advertising               Psychiatrist        

1995      Two Deaths        Cinca    

England, My England      Samuel Pepys   

1996      101 Dalmatians                 Mr. Skinner        

1999      Notting Hill         PR Chief              

2000      Gladiator             Senator Gaius   

2001      The Body             Moshe Cohen   

2002      K-19: The Widowmaker Admiral Bratyeev            

2004      Troy       Nestor

2005      The Headsman Archbishop        

2006      Alien Autopsy    Michael Kuhn    

2007      Sparkle Bernie  

Elizabeth: The Golden Age            Lord Howard     

2008      Chemical Wedding           Crowley               

Mirrors                 Lorenzo Sapelli

The Duchess       General Grey    

2011      The Awakening Reverend Hugh Purslow               

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1967-1969          Playhouse           Jamie / Schoner                2 episodes

1970      Omnibus              Léopold Zborowski          1 episode

1971      Elizabeth R          Duke of Sussex 3 episodes

1972      The Organization              John Wimbourne              1 episode

1974      Crown Court       John Claudius     1 episode

1974      Justice   Roger Anderson                1 episode

1975      Space: 1999        Captain Jack Tanner        1 episode

1976      Z-Cars    George Stonehouse        1 episode

1977      The Three Hostages        Gaudian               Television film

1978      Edward & Mrs. Simpson                Major Alexander Hardinge           Miniseries, 5 episodes

1980      Armchair Thriller              Vincent Craig     6 episodes

1981      Private Schulz    German Newsreel Reader            3 episodes

1982      The Woman in White      Sir Percival Glyde             5 episodes

1983      My Cousin Rachel             Ambrose Ashley               4 episodes

1983-1984          Wagner                Semper                Miniseries, 3 episodes

1984      Horizon                Cyril Burt             1 episode

1984      Sorrell and Son Thomas Roland Miniseries, 6 episodes

1985      Mr. Palfrey of Westminster          Adrian Vyner      1 episode

1985-1995          Screen Two         Various                 3 episodes

1986      Oedipus the King              Creon    BBC-TV

1987      Vanity Fair           Lord Steyne        5 episodes

1989      About Face         Donald 1 episode

1989      Blackeyes            Detective Blake                 Miniseries, 3 episodes

1990      Centrepoint        Claude Wareing                Miniseries, 4 episodes

1990      The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story           BKA Police Chief                Television film

1991      Young Catherine               Archimandrite Todorsky                Television film

1991      G.B.H.   Dr. Jacobs            Miniseries, 3 episodes

1991      Selling Hitler       Gerd Schulte-Hillen         Miniseries, 4 episodes

1992      The Good Guys Jerry Rushbridge               1 episode

1992      Between the Lines           D.A.C. Dunning Main cast, 6 episodes

1993      Crime Story         Roy Hall                1 episode

1994      The Chief             Dan Cheyney     1 episode

1994      Fatherland          General Globus Television film

1995      Kavanagh QC      Mr. Justice Griffin             1 episode

1995      Coogan's Run     Douglas Crown 1 episode

1996      Wycliffe                Dr. Sam Malvern               1 episode

1996-1997          Bodyguards        Commander Alan MacIntyre        Main cast, 7 episodes

1997      Inspector Morse               Dr. Julian Storrs                 1 episode

1998-2006          Midsomer Murders         Max Jennings / Leo Clarke            2 episodes: "Written in Blood" & "Death in Chorus"

1998      Invasion: Earth Air Marshal Bentley         Miniseries, 3 episodes

1999      Mary, Mother of Jesus   Simon   Television film

1999      Jonathan Creek Professor Lance Graumann          1 episode

1999      Hornblower        General François de Charette      1 episode, "The Frogs and the Lobsters"

2000      The 10th Kingdom           Governor of Prison          Miniseries, 3 episodes

2001      The Gentleman Thief      Monty Sinclair   Television film

2002      Foyle's War         Raymond Brooks              1 episode: "A Lesson in Murder"

2003      Spine Chillers     Nick       1 episode

2004      I Am Not an Animal         Narrator               Voice, Miniseries, 6 episodes

2006      Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire      Pompey               Miniseries, 1 episode: "Caesar"

2007      The Last Detective           Billy Palmer        1 episode

2007      The Inspector Lynley Mysteries Sergeant Mike McCaffrey             1 episode: "Limbo"

2008      The Palace           PM Edward Shaw             Recurring role, 4 episodes

2008      Apparitions         Cardinal Bukovak             Miniseries, 5 episodes

2010      New Tricks          DAC John Felsham           1 episode

2011      Waking the Dead              John Christie      2 episodes: "Solidarity"

2012      Merlin   The Sarrum         1 episode

2017      King Charles III   Archbishop of Canterbury             Television film