Geoffrey Hutchings, 71, Stage and TV actor [news.bbc.co.uk]
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16:34 GMT, Friday, 2 July 2010 17:34 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10494592.stm
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48236000/jpg/_48236935_geoffreyhutchings.jpg
Geoffrey Hutchings Hutchings died following a short illness
Stage and screen actor Geoffrey Hutchings, most recently seen in ITV's
Benidorm, has died at the age of 71.
Hutchings, who trained at Rada, saw his career stretch from
Shakespearean theatre to popular TV dramas, including the BBC's Our
Friends in the North.
His agent said the actor died suddenly in hospital on Thursday morning
from a suspected viral infection.
Hutchings's final series, the sitcom Grandma's House, is due to be
screened by BBC Two this summer.
He was due to begin filming the next series of Benidorm shortly.
TV roles
The Dorchester-born actor studied at Birmingham University, later
attending Rada and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company
(RSC) in 1968.
He won an Olivier Award for best comedy performance in 1982 for his role
in Poppy before moving into TV and film work.
His British films included John Cleese's Clockwise, Wish You Were Here
and the adaptation of Bruce Chatwin's On The Black Hill. He later
appeared in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy.
Hutchings' TV appearances included roles in shows such as Brass, Holby
City, Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders and a stint in EastEnders.
In 1998, he was part of the cast for the acclaimed Carry On-inspired
National Theatre production Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle And Dick, in which
he played comedy actor Sid James. The play was later adapted for TV as
Cor, Blimey!.
Hutching's agent Roger Charteris said: "He never stopped working.
Geoffrey was a delight to work with and he was absolutely one of a kind."
Tiger Aspect Productions, which is behind the series Grandma's House,
paid tribute to the actor.
A spokesman said: "We are all incredibly sad to hear of Geoffrey's passing.
"He has been a major part of Tiger Aspect's comedy in recent years, and
his unique talents will be hugely missed by everyone who knew and worked
with him.
"Our thoughts are with his family at this sad time."
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Shakespearean actor who played many familiar roles on film and television
Michael Coveney
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 July 2010 18.25 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/11/geoffrey-hutchings-obituary
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/7/11/1278862193603/Geoffrey-Hutchings-in-The-006.jpg
Geoffrey Hutchings in The Shawshank Redemption in 2009.
Few actors can claim to have played most of Shakespeare's clowns and
made some of them funny, but Geoffrey Hutchings, who has died of
meningitis aged 71, did just that. An associate artist with the Royal
Shakespeare Company, he played Launce, Bottom, Feste, one of the Dromios
and even the impossible Lavache in Trevor Nunn's great "Crimean war"
All's Well That Ends Well, with Peggy Ashcroft making her RSC farewell
as the Countess of Rousillon. Hutchings brought an individual quality of
asperity and crackle to everything he did, and was noted early on as a
character actor of uncommon personality: small, slight, but always
ferocious, he was like a terrier with a dangerous bark.
He grasped Autolycus, for instance, that wandering snapper-up of
unconsidered trifles, in Ronald Eyre's 1981 The Winter's Tale at
Stratford-upon-Avon, and transformed him into a Chaplinesque tramp with
a deliciously unlikely repertoire of Victorian parlour songs. In 1982 he
won a Swet (Society of West End Theatres) award for his hilarious Lady
Dodo, swanning around on a white elephant, in Terry Hands's brilliant
RSC Barbican production of Poppy, a satirical 19th-century pantomime by
Peter Nichols and Monty Norman.
Latterly, Hutchings was known to millions as the sun-bed tycoon Mel
Harvey in ITV's popular sitcom Benidorm, in which he starred from 2008.
He was due to film another series of Benidorm, and had also completed
work on a new BBC2 sitcom, Grandma's House, written by comedian Simon
Amstell. Over the years, he was a familiar face on Heartbeat, Casualty,
Foyle's War, Holby City and Our Friends in the North.
He was born in Dorchester, Dorset, the only child of a town clerk, and
was educated at the Thomas Hardye school. He won a scholarship to study
French and physical education at Birmingham University before training
for the stage at Rada. He made his West End debut at Her Majesty's
theatre in 1963, in Richard Rodgers's No Strings, a groundbreaking
musical with an inter-racial love story.
After spending a few years in rep, he joined the RSC in 1968 and, in his
first few seasons, played Octavius Caesar, the Pandar in Pericles, Peter
Simple in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Pisanio in Cymbeline; by the
time he played an explosive Dr Caius in The Merry Wives of Windsor in
1980, followed by an obscenely enthusiastic Bottom, he was an RSC
institution, in the best sense of the word: funny, familiar, reliable.
He returned to the company in 1990 as Cap'n Andy in their collaboration
with Opera North on the musical Show Boat.
Hutchings appeared at the National theatre in two American comedy
classics directed by Jonathan Lynn in the mid-1980s, Jacobowsky and the
Colonel, and Three Men On a Horse. He played the lead in both: a Jewish
Mr Fixit, Jacobowsky, scrambling through the fall of Paris in 1940; and
Erwin Trowbridge, a dreamy suburban greetings card versifier with a gift
for picking winners, who gets caught up in a gambling syndicate. All of
Hutchings's talent for clownish serenity were on show here, and it
seemed like a star-making performance as the play transferred to the
West End.
The breakthrough never quite happened. He drew more rave reviews at the
National 10 years later as the comedian Sid James in Terry Johnson's
Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick. The play charted Sid's backstage
affair with Barbara Windsor (unforgettably played by Samantha Spiro);
with his leer and creased-up features, Hutchings did more than conform
to Hattie Jacques's description of James as a dissipated walnut.
His films included Clockwise (1986), with a script by Michael Frayn,
starring John Cleese; Wish You Were Here (1987), Emily Lloyd's
auspicious debut; Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989); White Hunter Black
Heart (1990), Clint Eastwood's thinly veiled account of the making of
John Huston's The African Queen; and Thomas Vinterberg's sci-fi romance,
It's All About Love (2002), with Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes.
Hutchings's final stage appearance was in last year's theatrical
premiere of The Shawshank Redemption at the Wyndham's, in which he
memorably played the old prison librarian. He left several other
imperishable impressions in the West End: as the dustbin-bound Nagg in
Beckett's Endgame, with Michael Gambon and Lee Evans, in 2004; as a
worn-out suburban husband and father in Peter Gill's exquisite 2005
revival of John Osborne and Anthony Creighton's Epitaph for George
Dillon; and as a gentlemanly Herr Schultz in Rufus Norris's contentious
revival of Cabaret, wooing Sheila Hancock with a pineapple.
He made his home in Gloucestershire for many years but also lived with
his second wife, Andi Godfrey, in the same house in Westbourne Grove,
west London, as the producer Thelma Holt, who had introduced the couple.
He is survived by Andi and three children by his first wife.
• Geoffrey Albert Hutchings, actor, born 8 June 1939, died 1 July 2010