Redgrave, Sir Michael Scudamore (1908–85), English actor, formerly a schoolmaster. He made his first appearance on the professional stage with the
Liverpool Playhouse company, where he remained from 1934 to 1936, playing a wide variety of parts and marrying a fellow member of the company,
Rachel Kempson (1910– ). In 1936 they were together at the
Old Vic, where Redgrave made his first London appearance as Ferdinand in
Love's Labour's Lost, his other roles including Horner in
Wycherley's The Country Wife, in which he displayed a gift for comedy too rarely exploited. He joined
Gielgud's repertory season at the
Queen's Theatre in 1937 and was then seen at the
Phoenix Theatre as Alexei Turbin in
Bulgakov's The White Guard and as a richly comic Sir Andrew Aguecheek in
Twelfth Night (both 1938). His first notable appearance in a modern play was as Harry in T. S.
Eliot's The Family Reunion (1939), after which in 1940 came an interesting Macheath in
Gay's The Beggar's Opera and Charleston in Robert Ardrey's
Thunder Rock. After serving in the Royal Navy he returned to the theatre in 1943 as Rakitin in
Turgenev's A Month in the Country, followed by the title-role in Thomas Job's
Uncle Harry (1944) and Stjerbinsky in S. N.
Behrman's adaptation of
Werfel's Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1945). His first outstanding role in Shakespeare was Macbeth (1947; NY, 1948); he then played the Captain in
Strindberg's The Father (also 1948), subsequently rejoining the Old Vic company at the New Theatre (see
ALBERY), where in 1950 he played Hamlet for the first time. In 1951 he was at the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, playing Richard II and Prospero in
The Tempest, and he appeared in London a year later in
Odets's Winter Journey (known in America as
The Country Girl). Returning to Stratford in 1953, he played Shylock, King Lear, and Antony, and then deserted the classics for some years, being seen in
Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates (London and NY, 1955) and N. C.
Hunter's A Touch of the Sun (1958). In 1958 he also played Hamlet and Benedick in
Much Ado about Nothing at Stratford. A year later he starred in his own adaptation of Henry
James's The Aspern Papers, which was followed by Robert
Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse (1960) and Graham
Greene's The Complaisant Lover (NY, 1961). At the first
Chichester Festival in 1962 he gave an outstanding performance as
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, repeating it the following year during the
National Theatre's first season at the Old Vic, where he was also seen as Claudius in
Hamlet in 1963, Hobson in Harold
Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, and Solness in
Ibsen's The Master Builder (both 1964). He took over from Alec
Guinness in John
Mortimer's A Voyage round My Father in 1972, and was in Simon
Gray's Close of Play at the National Theatre in 1979. A fine actor, with a good presence and a superb speaking voice, he was particularly successful in the portrayal of men of intellect and sensibility flawed by emotional turbulence.
His two younger children,
Corin (1939– ) and
Lynn (1943– ), are also on the stage, the latter being well known in the USA where she now resides.
