Andrew "Anew" McMaster
(24 December 1891 – 24 August 1962) was a British stage actor who during his nearly 45 year acting career toured the UK, Ireland, Australia and the United States. For almost 35 years he toured as
actor-manager
of his own theatrical company performing the works of Shakespeare and other playwrights.
[1]
Early life
[
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]
He was born as
Andrew McMaster
, the son of Liverpool-born Andrew McMaster (1855–1940), a
Master Stevedore
, and Alice Maude (
nee
Thompson; 1865–1895). A number of sources make the erroneous claims, based on details supplied by McMaster himself, that he was born in 1893 or 1894 or even 1895 in
County Monaghan
in Ireland,
[2]
[3]
but according to the Birth Register and the 1901 Census he was actually born in 1891 in
Birkenhead
, England.
[4]
[5]
Like his future brother-in-law,
Micheal Mac Liammoir
, who was born in London as Alfred Willmore but who claimed to have been born in
Cork
to
Gaelic
-speaking parents, McMaster reinvented himself as Irish "and claimed for himself the town of
Monaghan
as his birthplace, and
Warrenpoint, County Down
, as the scene of his earliest memories."
[2]
[6]
Stage career
[
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]
Aged 19 'Mac' McMaster gave up a career in banking to pursue one on the stage. He moved to Ireland and toured that country with the O’Brien-Ireland theatrical company from 1910 to 1914.
[1]
Success quickly followed with his appearance as Jack O'Hara in
Paddy the Next Best Thing
at the
Savoy Theatre
(1920). From 1921 he toured Australia in this and other plays,
[7]
and in 1925 formed his own company, the McMaster Intimate Theatre Company, a '
fit-up
' company to tour in the works of Shakespeare, mainly in Ireland but also in Britain and Australia, touring with his theatrical company until 1959.
[1]
One of the last
actor-managers
"of the old school - and an epitome of the type",
[8]
on occasions McMaster would persuade a 'big name' to act with his company as a draw for audiences, and
Frank Benson
(1928),
Sara Allgood
(1929) and
Mrs Patrick Campbell
appeared with him.
[9]
In 1933 at the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre
in
Stratford-upon-Avon
he appeared as
Hamlet
opposite
Esme Church
as Gertrude,
Coriolanus
,
Macduff
in
Macbeth
, Leonato in
Much Ado About Nothing
,
Prince Escalus
in
Romeo and Juliet
, and
Petruchio
in
The Taming of the Shrew
. His greatest roles were as
Othello
and as
Shylock
in
The Merchant of Venice
, to which he added
King Lear
in 1952. Just before
World War II
he and his company appeared at the
Chiswick Empire
in a Shakespeare season. He toured the United States as James Tyrone in
Eugene O'Neill
's
Long Day's Journey into Night
in 1956. Having ‘a great organ voice’,
Harold Pinter
, who acted in his company in Ireland from 1951 to 1953 and called him 'Perhaps the greatest actor-manager of his time',
[10]
later described McMaster as ‘evasive, proud, affectionate, shrewd, merry’.
[11]
In his brief biography
Mac
(1968), Pinter recalled, "Mac gave about a half dozen magnificent performances of
Othello
while I was with him... At his best he was the finest Othello I have see. [He] stood dead in the centre of the role, and the great sweeping symphonic playing would begin, the rare tension and release within him, the arrest, the swoop, the savagery, the majesty and repose."
[12]
Pinter later wrote:
I wrote ‘A Note’ in 1951, when I was touring with Anew McMaster, the Shakespearean actor-manager, throughout Southern Ireland. We presented a different play every night (seven nights a week and two matinees) and our repertoire included
Hamlet
,
The Merchant of Venice
,
Julius Caesar
,
As You Like It
,
Macbeth
,
King Lear
and
Othello
.
'Mac' generally took two nights off a week when the rest of the company performed plays like
The Importance of Being Earnest
,
An Ideal Husband
,
Rope
and
An Inspector Calls
but Shakespeare dominated our lives. I had in any case been obsessed with him in the preceding four years but to find myself actually performing in his plays with the extraordinary Anew McMaster was an electric experience.
[13]
Of his time touring with McMaster in 1957 the actor
Henry Woolf
later recalled:
[McMaster] had a very strict rule for employment ? he hired whoever would accept the least money. So the quality of the company was, how shall we say, uneven... We did eight different Shakespeare plays a week, and then on Sundays, we’d put on a murder mystery or a romance or something... He had a superb voice, and very tall striking figure, and he didn’t have any inhibitions. He acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world for someone to act. It wasn’t ham; it wasn’t melodrama. If there was a height to be scaled, he would do it. He didn’t know much about the ‘Method’, or all these dogmas; he was a natural man, who felt things, very strongly. Little did I realise I was taking part in something that would disappear for ever. It was a wonderful thing, a missionary thing, bringing great plays to fairly remote areas.
[14]
McMaster's only film role was an uncredited appearance as the Judge in
Sword of Sherwood Forest
(1960).
Personal life
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]
In 1924 McMaster married the actress and designer Marjorie Willmore (1894–1970),
[15]
the sister of
Micheal Mac Liammoir
. They had two children, the actors John Christopher McMaster (1925–1995) and Mary-Rose McMaster (1926–2018).
Anew McMaster died aged 70 at his home in
Dublin
in Ireland in 1962.
Legacy
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]
McMaster trained a generation of actors who toured with his company and went on to achieve success as actors. These included:
Pauline Flanagan
,
[3]
Milo O'Shea
,
T. P. McKenna
,
Kenneth Haigh
,
Henry Woolf
,
Harold Pinter
,
Donal Donnelly
and
Patrick Magee
.
[8]
[9]
[16]
It was while they were touring with McMaster's company that the actor and dramatist
Micheal Mac Liammoir
and the actor and producer
Hilton Edwards
first met and began their lifelong partnership.
[17]
[18]
His
biography
,
A Life Remembered: A Memoir of Anew McMaster
by his daughter Mary-Rose McMaster, was published in 2017.
[19]
Harold Pinter
also published a short biography,
Mac
, in 1968.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
"Anew McMaster"
.
Documentary on One
.
Raidio Teilifis Eireann
. 10 November 1963.
- ^
a
b
Peter Raby,
The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter
, Cambridge University Press (2001) - Google Books p. 176
- ^
a
b
Notes on the life of Anew McMaster - RICORSO: A Knowledge of Irish Literature
- ^
England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1837-1915 for Andrew McMaster (1892) - Ancestry.com
(subscription required)
- ^
1901 England Census for Andrew McMaster, Cheshire, Birkenhead - Ancestry.com
(subscription required)
- ^
Christopher Fitz-Simon,
The Boys: A Double Biography
, London: Nick Hern Books, (1994) p. 64
- ^
Brief biography of Anew McMaster - The Dictionary of Ulster Biography
- ^
a
b
Nicholas Grene and Chris Morash (eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre
, Oxford University Press (2016) - Google Books
- ^
a
b
Christopher Morash,
A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000
, Cambridge University Press (2002) - Google Books p. 177
- ^
The Tour of Ireland with The Anew McMaster repertory company (1951-52) - the Harold Pinter website
- ^
Dennis Kennedy (ed.),
Anew McMaster (1891-1962) -
The Companion to Theatre and Performance
, Oxford University Press (2010): Published online: 2010
- ^
Pinter, Harold.
Mac
, Pendragon Press London (1968) pp.97-98
- ^
Harold Pinter
,
'A Note on Shakespeare' (1951) -
Granta Magazine
- ^
Interview with Henry Woolf: 'Back on the road in rural Ireland'
-
Le Monde
(2009)
- ^
England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005 for Andrew McMaster: 1924, Q3-Jul-Aug-Sep - Ancestry.com
(subscription required)
- ^
Obituary for Milo O'Shea
-
The Irish Times
, 6 April 2013
- ^
Blau, Eleanor (20 November 1982).
"HILTON EDWARDS, 79, IS DEAD; FOUNDER OF THEATER IN DUBLIN"
.
The New York Times
.
- ^
Micheal Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards - The Athenaeum
,
Enniscorthy
,
County Wexford
website
- ^
Mary-Rose McMaster,
A Life Remembered: A Memoir of Anew McMaster
, Carysfort Press (2017)
External links
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]