Geraint Wyn Davies - Stage Career

Stage Career

After Quebec Geraint moved to London's Centre Stage theatre company, and then played the lead in The Last Englishman with the British Actors Theatre Company. He then spent two seasons with Theatr Clwyd, touring Britain in Enemy of the People and Hamlet (for which he received the Regional Theatre Best Actor award), and a season with the Chichester Festival, in Henry VIII.

In Canada he appeared over several seasons with the Shaw Festival and Stratford Festival of Canada. He gained a reputation for his performances in The Music Cure, Candida, Cyrano de Bergereac, The Vortex, Goodnight Disgrace, Henry V, and The Three Musketeers. He even sang his way through the Rogers and Hart musical, The Boys from Syracuse. Other performances include My Fat Friend in Los Angeles and Sleuth with Patrick Macnee in Toronto. In 2004 he appeared in Washington, D.C. in the title roles of both Cyrano de Bergerac and Richard III.

In April 1996 Geraint appeared as Petruchio in Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew, directed by Patrick Tucker of the Original Shakespeare Company. This three-performance run was presented as Shakespeare's own players may have done - with sparse rehearsal, eclectic costuming, and rotating roles.

In Spring 1998 Geraint appeared in the Moises Kaufmann production, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Gross Indecency earned the Garland Award for "Best Ensemble Cast from Backstage West" that year.

In August 1999 Geraint starred in Leon Pownall's one-man show, An Evening with Dylan Thomas, at the Atlantic Theatre Festival in Nova Scotia, Canada. The following summer he returned to the Atlantic Theatre Festival in Pownall's Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare: In the Envy Of Some Greatness. August 2001 saw the completion of Pownall's Dylan Thomas trilogy with Stranger in Paradise.

The summer of 2002 Geraint returned to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theatre's main stage in My Fair Lady, as Henry Higgins, a role he shared with his friend Colm Feore. He also reprised his role of Dylan Thomas at the Festival's Studio Theatre.

Geraint returned to the Atlantic Theatre Festival in August 2003 to perform a one-act play Hughie by Eugene O'Neill. The evening was topped off by a presentation of The Sermon by David Mamet.

2004 saw Geraint appear at the Lincoln in New York as Edmund to Christopher Plummer's King Lear. Following Lear he starred in the title role of Cyrano at The Shakespeare Theatre, in Washington, D.C., almost every performance of which ended with a standing ovation, and for which Geraint won the prestigious "Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Resident Play".

In 2005 Geraint was Dylan Thomas for seven weeks in Do Not Go Gentle at the Arclight Theatre in New York City. While there he also did a reading of Tennessee Williams' letters at the New York Public Library, and performed in a reading of Eugene O'Neill's Days Without End.

In September he joined in a reading of R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island in Washington, D.C., and in October took part in a staged reading of a new play by Austin Pendleton entitled H6R3, which blends Shakespeare's plays Henry VI and Richard III.

In 2006 Geraint returned to The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. to perform Don Armado in Michael Kahn's 60's version of Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost. Following the American run the play moved to Stratford-Upon-Avon in Britain for a limited run. He was nominated but did not win The Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor, Resident Play for Don Armado. While in D.C. he also participated in a reading of London Assurance by Dion Boucicault.

Early in 2007 Geraint headlined as Richard III by Shakespeare at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. He, along with friend Brent Carver, are opening in Toronto's CanStage production of The Elephant Man in mid-October.

2008 saw Geraint’s return to Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival to appear in Hamlet (as Polonius) and Fuente Ovejuna (as the King). He followed the Stratford season playing the Duke in Red Bull Theater’s production of Women Beware Women in New York City.

Geraint returned to Stratford for their 2009 season playing Duncan in Macbeth, Caesar in Julius Caesar and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

For the 2010 Stratford Shakespeare Festival season, Geraint portrayed king Arthur in Lerner and Loewe's Camelot and Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor. The 2011 season featured him again in a singing role as king Arthur.

Wyn Davies has voiced two audio books, Great American Suspense: Five Unabridged Classics and Great Classic Hauntings: Six Unabridged Stories.

Read more about this topic:  Geraint Wyn Davies

Famous quotes containing the words stage and/or career:

    If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation’s greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.
    William Cobbett (1762–1835)