‘Patrick Stewart brought virile star power to the stage, from clowns to kings to wounded lions’ — SkimNews
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- Patrick Stewart died aged 86, his career showing how RSC gravitas and confidence drawn from Star Trek and X-Men turned a versatile company actor into a star.
- Bristol Old Vic staged Stewart as Warwick in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan in May 1965; after joining the RSC in 1966, he ranged from clowns Touchstone and Launce to muscular figures Cornwall and Hector.
- Patrick Stewart established his star power in the 1971-72 season, beginning with a ruthless Bulgarian communist in Trevor Griffiths’s Occupations and continuing through Aufidius, Cassius and Enobarbus before taking over as the murderous Aaron in Titus Andronicus during Trevor Nunn’s Romans cycle.
- Actors in Residence toured US colleges with Stewart performing Shakespeare after his work with American students in London; during a 1986 lecture and performance in LA, producer Robert H Justman turned to his wife and said, “We’ve found our captain.”
- Star Trek recruited Stewart for six years after the LA encounter, even as English colleagues thought he was crazy to abandon theatre; his Hollywood period, including Professor X in X-Men, enriched his confidence and authority.
- Antony and Cleopatra returned Stewart to the RSC in 2006 opposite Harriet Walter; the following year’s review called him the best Mark Antony since Michael Redgrave, describing a magnificently wounded lion haunted by his memory of being king of the jungle.
- Macbeth in 2007 at Chichester and the West End gave Stewart a performance full of paranoia and an agonized soaring voice; in 2008, his RSC Claudius opposite David Tennant ended with a pitying head-shake rather than panic.
Why it matters: Stewart’s six-year Star Trek contract and Professor X work strengthened the confidence and authority he brought back to RSC roles, while Actors in Residence performed Shakespeare on American college tours. For theatre audiences and acting students, that exchange is the material legacy: an actor who made screen stardom deepen classical work, rather than replace it.
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