Porter, Eric Richard

Porter, Eric Richard (1928–95), English actor, who made his first appearance in 1945 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and eventually joined Gielgud's company at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 1953. He was for a time with the Bristol Old Vic, where he played Becket in a revival of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Father James Browne in Graham Greene's The Living Room, as well as a number of classical parts, including the title-roles in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Jonson's Volpone. In 1957 he toured England with the Lunts in Dürrenmatt's Time and Again, in which in 1958 he made his début in New York, where it was renamed The Visit. In 1959 he was seen at the Royal Court Theatre as Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmersholm and he then joined the RSC, where his roles included a fine Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Leontes in The Winter's Tale (all 1960), the title-roles in Anouilh's Becket (1961) and in Macbeth (1962), Barabas in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta in 1965 (in conjunction with Shakespeare's Shylock), and Ossip in Gogol's The Government Inspector (1966). In 1968 he returned to the RSC as King Lear in Nunn's production and also as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, repeating the latter role on tour in the USA a year later. At Christmas 1971 he doubled the parts of Mr Darling and Captain Hook in Barrie's Peter Pan. In 1988 he returned to the stage after a long absence as Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the National Theatre. In 1989 at the Old Vic, under Jonathan Miller's direction, he again played Lear.