Wood, John

Wood, John (date of birth undisclosed), English actor, who was on the stage for some years after leaving Oxford, where he was President of OUDS, before his excellence was recognized. He was with the Old Vic company, 1954–6, and made his West End début as Don Quixote in Tennessee William's Camino Real (1957). He made his first appearance in New York in 1967 as Guildenstern in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (playing the Player King there in a further production in 1987). His outstanding performance in James Joyce's Exiles (1970), in which he uncovered the layers of meaning hidden within the text, first revealed his true quality. He then joined the RSC, 1971–2, playing Yakov in Gorky's Enemies, Sir Fopling Flutter in Etherege's The Man of Mode, Brutus in Julius Caesar, and a psychotic Saturninus in Titus Andronicus. After his spindly, lecherous, and slightly manic husband in John Mortimer's Collaborators (1973) he returned to the RSC in the title-role of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes and as Henry Carr in Stoppard's Travesties (both 1974), repeating the roles in New York in 1974 and 1975 respectively. In 1976 he was seen with the RSC in Shaw's The Devil's Disciple and in the title-role of Chekhov's Ivanov, and in 1978 he had an enormous success in New York in Ira Levin's thriller Deathtrap. Back in London in 1979, he gave an electrifying performance as Richard III with the National Theatre company, for which he also appeared in Schnitzler's Undiscovered Country in Tom Stoppard's adaptation, and in 1980 in Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife. In 1981 he returned to New York to take over from Ian McKellen in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus. Again with the RSC, he was superb as Prospero in The Tempest in 1988 and as Solness in Ibsen's The Master Builder in 1989.