Friday, April 17, 2009

Royce Ryton dies

As The Stage reports, playwright Royce Ryton has died at the age of 84.

His best know work was Crown Matrimonial, which opened in 1972, and has enjoyed numerous revivals around the world.

Update (18th April): There's a nice obituary today by Michael Coveney in The Guardian.
Ryton was a burly man, with a mass of orange, curly hair. He was devoted to his family - he was married to the actor Morar Kennedy (Ludovic's sister) - and was incorrigibly camp in manner. His daughter admits that he had the most appalling taste in clothes, often wearing lots of red with plenty of glitter and frills. For much of the year, he went around looking like a Christmas tree but, like Quentin Crisp, he couldn't care less. He spoke in clipped, aphoristic sentences, a style he carried through in his work. Like Oscar Wilde, he was always "on" in public, and like Nöel Coward, whom he admired inordinately, he was given to a lot of finger-wagging, both on and off stage.

3 comments:

  1. What a shame. I only met him a couple of times - we shared the same agent - but he was a great character and very kind to me. RIP

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  2. Anonymous9:53 am

    Seems like the loss of a connection to a previous age. I can remember he always carried a quill pen with him in the front of House bars during his opening nights! He said it was an age old tradition, though I don't recall any other writers doing it. Sad to see him gone. Colin Bennett.

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  3. Rodney Figaro6:32 pm

    THE BOY JULIET (by Royce Ryton) will be performed at the Stables Theatre, Hastings, East Sussex. All enquiries to the director, Rodney Figaro, on 01435 882 043.

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