Rogers, Paul

Rogers, Paul (1917– ), English actor, with a high reputation in both classical and modern plays. After his début, in London, in 1938, he went to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1939, and after serving in the Royal Navy returned to acting in 1946, joining the Bristol Old Vic a year later. From 1949 to 1960 he was with the Old Vic company, leaving it to appear in T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958). He made his New York début in 1956 as John of Gaunt in Richard II, and during his time with the Old Vic played many leading roles in Shakespeare, including Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Henry VIII (both 1953), Macbeth (1954 and 1956), and King Lear (1958). After leaving the company he was seen in the London production of Archibald MacLeish's J.B. (1961), followed by Ustinov's Photo Finish (1962; NY, 1963) and Chekhov's The Seagull (1964). A year later he became a member of the RSC, where he gave brilliant performances as Max in Pinter's The Homecoming (1965; NY, 1967) and as the muffin-faced mayor in Gogol's The Government Inspector in 1966. He returned to the West End to give a display of virtuosity in three roles in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite (1969), and in 1970 took over the part of the tweedy, fiction-writing bully in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth (NY, 1971). He appeared with the National Theatre company in Shaw's Heartbreak House in 1975 and Jonson's Volpone in 1977, and was twice seen in Granville-Barker's plays: The Marrying of Ann Leete in 1975 for the RSC, and The Madras House for the National in 1977. Later roles included Sir in Ronald Harwood's The Dresser in New York in 1981 and Hornby in Pinter's A Kind of Alaska (NT, 1982).