Howard, Alan Mackenzie

Howard, Alan Mackenzie (1937– ), English actor, nephew of the film and stage star Leslie Howard, whose good looks he inherited. He made his first appearance in the initial production at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, the musical Half in Earnest (1958), going with the company to London to appear in Wesker's Roots (1959) at the Royal Court, where in 1960 he was in the complete Wesker trilogy. He first attracted attention in Julian Mitchell's adaptation of Ivy Compton-Burnett's novel A Heritage and Its History (1965). In 1966 he joined the RSC, remaining with it for many years and playing a wide variety of parts, among them Lussurioso in Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy (1966), Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing (1968), Hamlet (1970), and doubling Theseus and Oberon in Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (also 1970; NY, 1971), achieving a triumph of physical dexterity and meticulous verse-speaking. Over the next few years a series of Shakespearian parts—Prince Hal, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, Coriolanus, and Antony (to the Cleopatra of Glenda Jackson)—brought him great critical praise, and he was also much admired as Jack Rover in the revival of O'Keeffe's Wild Oats (1976). One of his most acclaimed performances was in the title-role of all three parts of Henry VI (1977). He appeared in Gorky's Enemies (1971) and The Children of the Sun (1979) and was seen in the British première of Ostrovsky's The Forest and the world première of C. P. Taylor's Good (both 1981), starring in the last in the West End and New York in 1982.