Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington (7 June 1943 – 7 May 2026) was an English actor, director and writer. Together with director Michael Bogdanov, he founded the English Shakespeare Company in 1986 and was its joint artistic director until 1992. He wrote ten books, directed in the UK and across the world, and was an honorary associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Over a 60-year stage career he played a host of Shakespeare's title roles and other leading characters, while on screen he appeared as Laertes in Hamlet (1969), Moff Jerjerrod in Return of the Jedi (1983), and Michael Foot in The Iron Lady (2011).
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Background
Pennington was born in Cambridge, East Anglia, the son of Vivian Maynard Cecil Pennington (died 1984) and Euphemia Willock, née Fyfe (died 1987), and grew up in London. He was educated at Marlborough College, became a member of the National Youth Theatre and then read English at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Theatre work
Pennington joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on graduation and remained in a junior capacity from 1964 to 1966, playing among other things Fortinbras in David Warner's 1965 Hamlet. He then left the company for eight years and worked in London, both on the stage (in John Mortimer's The Judge, Christopher Hampton's Savages and Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet with Nicol Williamson), and on television in many single dramas. He returned to the RSC in 1974 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure, beginning a relationship with the company as a leading actor which culminated in his own performance of Hamlet in 1980–81: he also played Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost, Edgar in King Lear, and in new work by David Rudkin, David Edgar and Howard Brenton and classic works by Sean O'Casey, Euripides and William Congreve. He then left the company for a further eight years before appearing in Stephen Poliakoff's Playing with Trains, and ten years after that in the title role of Timon of Athens. In the meanwhile he appeared at the National Theatre in 1984 in Tolstoy's Strider, for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award, in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd, and also premiered his solo show Anton Chekhov which he subsequently toured internationally. He also played Raskolnikov in Yuri Lyubimov's adaptation of Crime and Punishment, and Henry in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing in London's West End and played the title role in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex on BBC TV in 1985.
In 1986, Pennington and director Michael Bogdanov together founded the English Shakespeare Company. As joint artistic director, he starred in the company's inaugural productions of The Henrys and, in 1987, the seven-play history cycle of The Wars of the Roses, which toured worldwide and was televised. Pennington played such parts as Richard II, Prince Hal/Henry V and Jack Cade (Olivier Award Nomination). In subsequent seasons with the ESC, he played Leontes in The Winter's Tale and the title roles in Macbeth and Coriolanus (Olivier Award Nomination) and directed Twelfth Night, which he then also directed for the Haiyuza Theatre Company in Tokyo and for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.
From the 1970s, he appeared frequently with Judi Dench and also with her husband Michael Williams. The third time he played opposite Dench was in Peter Shaffer's play The Gift of the Gorgon, in 1992, in which they appeared as a married couple. His other West End work in the 1990s included Archie Rice in The Entertainer, Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet, Major Arnold in Taking Sides (Ronald Harwood), Oscar Wilde in Gross Indecency, Sir John Brute in Farquhar's The Provok'd Wife, Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's Waste, Trigorin in The Seagull, and the title role in Molière's The Misanthrope. In the first Harold Pinter Festival in Dublin he played in Pinter's Old Times and One for the Road. In 1998, he worked with Sir Peter Hall and other actors to run a workshop at the National Theatre Studio, which received considerable plaudits.
Other work
In 1983, Pennington appeared as Moff Jerjerrod in the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi alongside fellow Old Vic alumnus James Earl Jones. He also played Michael Foot in The Iron Lady (2011) with Meryl Streep. His notable TV appearances included the title roles in Oedipus Rex (1986) and the 1987 made-for-television film The Return of Sherlock Holmes. He also played Holmes's nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in two BBC Radio dramatisations of the Holmes short stories "The Final Problem" in 1992 and "The Empty House" in 1993.
He was the author of the book Are You There, Crocodile? which combines biographical material about the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov with an account of the writing of his highly successful one-man show about Chekhov, the full text of which is included. He also wrote three books about individual Shakespeare plays, Sweet William – Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare, as well as Let Me Play the Lion Too – How to Be an Actor for Faber and Faber. His solo show Sweet William is available as a DVD. Pennington also worked as a narrator on many TV documentaries.
In April 2004, he became the second actor, after Harley Granville-Barker in 1925, to deliver the British Academy's annual Shakespeare lecture. The lecture was entitled Barnadine's Straw: The Devil in Shakespeare's Detail.
Personal life and death
In 1964, Pennington married actress Katharine Barker, with whom he had a son before they divorced in 1967. Beginning in 1978, when they appeared together in Love's Labour's Lost, he shared a flat with actress Jane Lapotaire in St John's Wood, London, though at the time Lapotaire said they were "just friends".
Pennington died at Denville Hall, London, on 7 May 2026, at the age of 82. His long-term partner, arts administrator Prue Skene, pre-deceased him in 2025.
Selected stage credits
Richard II (Earl of Salisbury), National Youth Theatre, Apollo Theatre, London, 9–19 and 30 August – 2 September 1961
Henry IV, Part 2 (Earl of Warwick), National Youth Theatre, Apollo Theatre, London, 22–29 August 1961
Hamlet (title role), ADC Theatre, Cambridge, February 1964
Love's Labour's Lost (Dumaine and understudying Berowne), Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1965
Hamlet (Fortinbras), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon and Aldwych Theatre, London, 1965
The Judge by John Mortimer, Theatre Royal, Brighton, and Cambridge Theatre, London, 1967
Hamlet (Laertes), Round House, London, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York, and Huntington Hartford Theatre, Los Angeles, 1969
Three Sisters (Andrei), Cambridge Arts Theatre, 1971
Trelawny of the Wells (Ferdinand Gadd), Cambridge Arts Theatre, 1971
Savages by Christopher Hampton (Crawshaw), Royal Court Theatre and Comedy Theatre, London, 1973
Measure for Measure (Angelo), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1974
The Tempest (Ferdinand), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1974
Afore Night Come (Johnny Hobnails), RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1974
Romeo and Juliet (Mercutio), RSC, Straford-upon-Avon, 1976, and Aldwych Theatre, London, 1977
Filmography
Books
Rossya: A Journey through Siberia (1977)
Txèkhov – Un monòleg sobre la vida d'Anton Txèkhov (1989) (Catalan translation of Anton Chekhov) ISBN 84-297-2876-7
The English Shakespeare Company – The Story of the Wars of the Roses (with Michael Bogdanov) (1990)
Hamlet: A User's Guide (1996)
Twelfth Night: A User's Guide (2000)
Are You There, Crocodile? Inventing Anton Chekhov (2003)
A Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg (2004)
A Midsummer Night's Dream: A User's Guide (2005)
Sweet William: Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare (2012)
Let Me Play the Lion Too – How to Be an Actor (2015)
King Lear in Brooklyn (2016)