Patrick George Magee (né McGee, 31 March 1922 – 14 August 1982) was an Irish actor.[2] He was noted for his collaborations with playwrights Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, sometimes called "Beckett's favourite actor,"[3] as well as creating the role of the Marquis de Sade in the original stage and screen productions of Marat/Sade.
Critic Antonia Quirke posthumously described him as "a presence so full of strangeness and charisma and difference and power,"[5] while scholar Conor Carville wrote that Magee was an "avant-garde bad-boy" and "very important and unjustly forgotten figure who represents an important aspect of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain."[6]
Biography
McGee (he changed the spelling of his surname to Magee when he began performing, most likely to avoid confusion with another actor) was born into a middle-class Catholic family at 2 Edward Street, Armagh, County Armagh.[7] The eldest of five children, he was educated at St. Patrick's Grammar School.
Stage acting
His first stage experience in Ireland was with Anew McMaster's touring company, performing the works of Shakespeare. It was here that he first worked with Pinter. He was then brought to London by Tyrone Guthrie for a series of Irish plays. He met Beckett in 1957 and soon recorded passages from the novel, Molloy, and the short story, From an Abandoned Work, for BBC radio. Impressed by "the cracked quality of Magee's distinctly Irish voice," Beckett requested copies of the tapes and wrote Krapp's Last Tape especially for the actor.[8] First produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 28 October 1958, the play starred Magee directed by Donald McWhinnie. A televised version with Magee directed by McWhinnie was later broadcast by BBC2 on 29 November 1972.[9] Beckett's biographer Anthony Cronin wrote that "there was a sense in which, as an actor, he had been waiting for Beckett as Beckett had been waiting for him."[10]
Magee married Belle Sherry, also a native of County Armagh, in 1958. The couple had two children, twins Mark and Caroline (b. February 1961), and remained together until Magee's death.
He was known as something of a "hellraiser." He often struggled with bouts of alcoholism and gambling that adversely affected his finances, and his professional relationships.[6]
He was a staunch Irish republican, and an active campaigner for left-wing social and political causes. In 1976, he played an instrumental role in persuading his trade union Equity to boycott South Africa over the country's apartheid laws.[11]
Death
A heavy drinker, Magee died from a heart attack at his flat in Fulham, southwest London, on 14 August 1982, at the age of 60, according to obituaries in The Glasgow Herald and The New York Times.[12] His final role was in an episode of Play for Today which aired on 14 December 1982, three months after his death.
"[Magee] is a very important and unjustly forgotten figure who represents an important aspect of the cultural ferment of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain. The persona he had off-stage was that of a hell raiser, and this blended into the roles he was cast in. He was at the forefront of theatrical and cinematic experiment of the time, and yet, as a BBC stalwart on both radio and TV and a West End actor, he was also ensconced in the mainstream. As well as this, his immersion in the new British horror genre meant he moved in underground circles. My research has revealed an undercurrent of desperation in his career, as he took on such roles for the income they provided. It is this multifaced character that makes Magee a lightning rod for the tensions and contradictions of his era."
On 29 July 2017, actor Stephen Rea, who appeared alongside Patrick Magee in a production of Samuel Beckett's play Endgame, unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Magee's birthplace at 2 Edward Street, Armagh.[13][11]
In a retrospective written on the actor's 100th birthday in 2022 on Senses of Cinema, Mark Lager particularly praised Patrick Magee as the character Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and as the character McCann in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party as the best performances of his career, while also considering his character of the blind patient George Carter in Freddie Francis's Tales from the Crypt as his most memorable of many performances in horror films.[14]
