Dictionary of irish biography
McKenna, Thomas Patrick (‘T. P.’) (1929–2011), actor, was born on 7 September 1929 in Mullagh, Co. Cavan, the eldest of ten children of Raphael (‘Ralph’) McKenna, an auctioneer and merchant, and his wife Mae. After attending Mullagh national school, he boarded at St Patrick’s College, Cavan (1942–8), where he was much influenced by Fr Vincent Kennedy, a fine concert pianist who cultivated a passion for music and literature in his pupils. He introduced the young T. P. (almost always known by his initials) to the theatre and, recognising his fine singing voice, gave him parts in the school’s Gilbert and Sullivan productions. McKenna also played Gaelic football, representing St Patrick’s in the all-Ireland colleges championship final in 1948. For the rest of his life, he maintained a keen interest in sport, especially rugby, enthusiastically supporting the Irish international team and his native province of Ulster.
McKenna enjoyed acting and, inspired by the performances the touring company of Anew McMaster (qv), had ambitions for a stage career, but after leaving school in 1948 he worked as an Ulster Bank clerk in Granard and Trim. A transfer to Dublin allowed him to train at the Abbey School of Acting and join the Dublin Shakespeare Society and the Rathmines and Rathgar Musical Society. When in line for another transfer to the quiet town of Killeshandra in Co. Cavan, he quit the bank (much to his father’s displeasure) and decided to try to become a professional actor. He became friendly with actors such as Milo O’Shea (qv), who introduced him in 1953 to the tiny Pike Theatre in Herbert Lane, and Godfrey Quigley (qv), who invited him to join the Globe Theatre Company in Dún Laoghaire. Both theatres staged modern works by international playwrights, and McKenna appeared in several of their productions, but was unable to make a living. He then decided to use his political connections (his uncle Justin Charles McKenna (1896–1950) was a pro-treaty Sinn Féin TD for Louth–Meath (1921–2)) to secure an interview with Ernest Blythe (qv), managing director of the Abbey Theatre. Although Blythe was unimpressed by McKenna’s poor grasp of Irish, he grudgingly agreed to use him for a 1953 Christmas show, which eventually led to other parts and a place in the company (1955–63). Notable roles included the lead as Bob Fitzpatrick in ‘The risen people’ (1958) by James Plunkett (qv), the elder son in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long day’s journey into night’ (1959), and Robert Emmet (qv) in Donal Giltinan’s ‘A light in the sky’ (1962).
Branching out, McKenna made his radio debut in 1955 in Radio Éireann’s sponsored serial drama ‘The Kennedys of Castleross’, directed by Quigley. In 1956 he married May White (d. 2007), originally from Co. Laois, who was working for Radio Éireann; they had five children, two of whom, Breffni and Kilian (1959–2014), became actors. With the opening in 1958 of Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co. Wicklow, McKenna was one of those signed up for (mostly minor) roles in films, such as A terrible beauty (aka The night fighters) (1960), The siege of Sydney Street (1960), Freedom to die (1961), and The quare fellow (1962).
Although McKenna and his fellow actors had some success in persuading the Abbey’s management to depart occasionally from a conservative Irish repertoire, this was a constant and wearying battle. After his success at St Martin’s in London in ‘Stephen D.’ (1963) by Hugh Leonard (qv), McKenna quit the Abbey and decided to base himself in London, commuting back to his family in Dublin until 1972, when they joined him. Making his television debut in 1963, he co-starred with his friend Donal Donnelly (qv) in the BBC Sunday play The fly sham. From then on he was a familiar face on British television, appearing in series such as The avengers (1964–5, 1968), Dr Finlay’s casebook (1964, 1969) Danger man (1965), The saint (1966, 1968), Callan (1972), Crown court(1974–82), The Sweeney (1975), Blake’s 7 (1978), Minder (1984), Dr Who (1988–9), Casualty (1992, 1997), Lovejoy (1993), the final episode of Inspector Morse (2000), The Bill (2001) and Ballykissangel (2001). He also appeared in many TV movies and mini-series, and was much in demand for period dramas, playing Barras in Napoleon and love (1974), Count von Hotzendorf in Fall of eagles (1974), Lord Curzon in Nancy Astor (1982), Harold Skimpole in Bleak house (1985), Justin McCarthy (qv) in Parnell and the Englishwoman (1991), and Edmund Burke (qv) in Longitude (2000).
He worked with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London (1963–4 and 1969–70), and in 1968 joined Stuart Burge’s company at the Nottingham Playhouse, playing Trigorin in ‘The seagull’ and Joseph Surface in ‘The school for scandal’, both directed by Jonathan Miller. In 1971–2 he acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the Aldwych Theatre, London. Notable roles on the English stage included Fitzpatrick in David Storey’s ‘The contractor’, directed by Lindsay Anderson at the Royal Court Theatre (1969); Robert Hand in ‘Exiles’, the only play by James Joyce (qv), directed by Harold Pinter at the Mermaid Theatre (1970); and Anthony Anderson in ‘The devil’s disciple’ by G. B. Shaw (qv), directed by Jack Gold at the RSC (1976).
McKenna’s versatility was such that he never became typecast or famous for any one part, but was renowned by his peers and audiences as one of the great character actors. It was said that he made acting look effortless, but this belied the hard work he put into mastering scripts and working out his approach to characters. He often played Irish roles, but usually figures of some substance rather than clichéd stage Irishmen. His distinguished looks and air of calm authority made him particularly convincing as a statesman, judge, senior policeman or clergyman. Although adept at playing suave, urbane men of the world, he was capable of imbuing his performances with subtle shades of self-doubt and vulnerability, and many critics thought he was at his best in poignant roles that touched on failure and disillusionment, most notably in his portrayals of Chekhov’s characters. A superb raconteur, he loved the company of fellow actors and writers, and numbered Patrick Kavanagh (qv) among his friends. He gave an oration at Kavanagh’s grave, and performed a one-man presentation of his works at the Cavan Drama Festival. Off stage, he could sometimes play the part of the loud, irascible thespian, but those who knew him well testified to a quieter, more reflective figure. Interested in politics, he was a member of the Finchley branch of the British Labour Party.
In 1966, with the opening of the new theatre in Abbey Street, McKenna was made an honorary life member of the Abbey Theatre company. By the 1970s he worked occasionally as a director and returned to the Abbey in 1973 to direct Tom Kilroy’s ‘The death and resurrection of Mr Roche’ (8 May). He believed that the Abbey had a role to play in educating its audience to appreciate the best of international theatre and that it should intersperse modern progressive work among a more popular repertoire of Irish classics. In 1973 he took on the role of Andrew Wyke opposite Donal Donnelly in the Irish premiere of Anthony Shaffer’s ‘Sleuth’, which played to acclaim in both Cork and Dublin, breaking the box office record for the Olympia Theatre.
McKenna’s film career continued in tandem with stage and television work, with roles as Buck Mulligan in Joseph Strick’s Ulysses (1967), W. H. Russell (qv) in Tony Richardson’s The charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Norris in Charles Jarrott’s Anne of the thousand days (1969), Simon Dedalus in Strick’s A portrait of the artist as a young man (1977), and Henry VIII in John Walsh’s Monarch (2000). He also had notable roles in Peter Hall’s Perfect Friday (1970), Sam Peckinpah’s Straw dogs (1971), Michael Tuchner’s Villain (1971), Claude Whatham’s All creatures great and small (1975), Peter Ustinov’s Memed, my hawk (1984), and Laurence Dunmore’s The libertine (2004).
During the late 1980s and 1990s, McKenna took up the invitation of Michael Colgan, director of the Gate Theatre, and returned to the Dublin stage to appear in much-acclaimed productions of Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘The cherry orchard’, and Harold Pinter’s ‘No man’s land’. While at the Gate he helped create the role of Dr Rice in ‘Molly Sweeney’ by Brian Friel (qv), which he reprised at London’s Almeida Theatre. His final stage appearance was in Friel’s ‘Aristocrats’ at the Royal National Theatre (2004). A notable late television performance was in the RTÉ drama series Fair city in 2004, playing a priest tortured with guilt for failing to report a fellow priest’s sexual abuse of children.
After a long illness, McKenna died on 13 February 2011 in hospital in Hampstead, London, and was buried alongside his wife at Teampall Cheallaigh cemetery in Co. Cavan.
Ir. Times, 18, 19, 20 July 1966; 15 Apr. 1997; 19 Feb. 2011; ITWW; Hugh Hunt, The Abbey: Ireland’s national theatre, 1904–1978 (1979); E. H. Mikhail (ed.), The Abbey Theatre: interviews and recollections(1988); Robert Welch, The Abbey Theatre, 1899–1999 (2004 ed.); Raymond Dunne and Francis J. MacKiernan, The college boys: students of the Kilmore Academy and St Patrick’s College, Cavan, 1839–2000 (2008); Daily Telegraph, 15 Feb. 2011; Anglo-Celt, 16 Feb. 2011; Guardian, 16 Feb. 2011; Independent (London), 17 Feb. 2011; Ir. Independent, 18, 20 Feb. 2011; Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (downloaded Oct. 2016
The guardian obituary in 2011.
Before he became a familiar face on television and cinema screens, the outstanding Irish actor TP McKenna, who has died after a long illness aged 81, bridged the gap between the old and the new Abbey theatres in Dublin. He appeared with the company for eight years during the interim period at the Queen’s theatre; the old Abbey burned down in 1951, the new one opened by the Liffey in 1966.
During that time he made his reputation as a leading actor of great charm, vocal resource – with a fine singing voice – and versatility. He was equally adept at comedy and tragedy, a great exponent of the best Irish playwriting from JM Synge and Séan O’Casey to Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel. The elder son in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was a favourite, much acclaimed role.
It was Stephen D, Leonard’s skilful conflation of two James Joyce books, for the rival Gate theatre that in 1963 brought McKenna to London, where he stayed for more or less the rest of his career, appearing regularly on West Endstages while reaching wider audiences.
He played barristers and detectives, conmen, police officers and a pope. His default mode was an imposing, authoritative geniality, and when he played a Nazi engaging in the casual slaughter of Jews in the TV mini-series Holocaust (1978), it was as hard to watch as it was to credit that this was the same actor who was so delightful as Harold Skimpole (“no idea of time, no idea of money”) in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1985) on BBC television.
For an actor, McKenna was an unusually modest and self-effacing man, and this trait lent a profound transparency and poignancy to those performances that touched on failure and disappointment, notably in Chekhov. You never saw the joins.
His family had settled in Mullagh, County Cavan, in the north of Ireland, in the 18th century. His great-grandfather, Nicholas McKenna, was an auctioneer, tradesman and farmer; his uncle, Justin McKenna, a notable politician; and his father, Ralph, also an auctioneer and merchant. Thomas – generally known in later life as “TP” – was the eldest of 10 children. He was educated at Mullagh national school and St Patrick’s college, Cavan, where he studied literature and discovered his acting and singing talent in Gilbert and Sullivan. He played Gaelic football, representing St Patrick’s in the final of the All Ireland colleges competition in 1948.
As a schoolboy, he had seen the legendary Anew McMaster‘s touring company in Shakespeare and decided to go on the stage. But first he took his banking exams in Belfast, then worked for the Ulster Bank in Granard, Trim and Dublin, where he trained at the Abbey Theatre School. He made his debut at the Pyke in 1953, appeared with McMaster at the Gaiety in 1954 (playing Horatio in Hamlet and Albany in King Lear) before joining the Abbey.
McKenna played more than 70 roles for the Abbey at the Queen’s, a large, demanding theatre seating 900. One of the Gate theatre’s biggest modern successes was Stephen D at the Dublin Theatre festival of 1962. In the following year, McKenna came with it, and his fellow actor Norman Rodway, to London. Although he returned to Dublin in 1966 to play in the Abbey’s reopening production – Walter Macken’s Recall the Years, a curtain-raiser to a major revival of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars – McKenna never liked the new theatre and revelled in the wider opportunities now open to him on British television and stage.
At the Royal Court in 1964, he played Cassius in Lindsay Anderson’s revival of Julius Caesar, then joined Stuart Burge and Jonathan Miller at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1968, playing the Bastard in King John, Joseph Surface in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, Trigorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull and Macduff in Macbeth. At the end of an exhausting season, he directed his first and favourite play, Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.
Back at the Court in 1969, he was one of the two Irish contractors in David Storey’s The Contractor, directed by Anderson, and this role with his compatriot Jim Norton led to both of them being hired by Sam Peckinpah to appear in Straw Dogs (1971), his fourth major film, following Joseph Strick‘s Ulysses (1967) – he was Buck Mulligan – Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and Charles Jarrott’s Anne of the Thousand Days (1969). McKenna had a soft spot for Peter Hall’s Perfect Friday (1970), a comedy caper with Stanley Baker, Ursula Andress and David Warner, and he also popped up tellingly opposite Richard Burton in Michael Tuchner’s Villain (1971), the first movie “inspired” by the Kray twins.
McKenna had married May White, literally the girl next door, who worked for Radio Éireann, in 1955, but he did not bring the family over to settle in London until 1972. Notable stage roles over the next two decades included Robert Hand in James Joyce’s only play, Exiles, directed by Harold Pinter at the Mermaid in 1970; a straitlaced puritan preacher in George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple for the RSC in 1976, a performance of coruscating charm opposite Tom Conti, John Wood, Zoë Wanamaker and Bob Hoskins; a beautifully modulated doctor in Max Stafford-Clark’s production of Thomas Kilroy’s take on The Seagull at the Royal Court in 1980; and the Duke of Florence, an acid-voiced, bleakly ruthless intelligencer, in Philip Prowse’s gorgeous staging of John Webster’s The White Devil at the National in 1991.
He returned to the Gate several times. The artistic director Michael Colgan said that his Uncle Vanya there in 1987 was the most moving performance of his tenure, while his Serebryakov in the same Chekhov play, a few years later, fitted equally well. His whiskey-sodden, disenchanted ophthalmologist in Friel’s Molly Sweeney (1994), a play about regaining sight but losing faith, was just as potent and memorable, and he played a wonderful double act with Niall Buggy in Pinter’s No Man’s Land in 1997.
And there seemed hardly a major television series he did not adorn, as a maverick Russian agent in Callan, or as various villains in Lovejoy, Minder and The Sweeney. He was the final suspect ever interviewed by John Thaw as Inspector Morse. His last major movie was Lawrence Dunmore’s The Libertine (2004), starring Johnny Depp in Stephen Jeffreys’s screenplay from his own theatre piece, and he last appeared on the London stage in 2005, as the disabled father in a National Theatre revival by Tom Cairns of Friel’s elegiac Aristocrats.
But with a fine, black-humoured Irish flourish, he saved his last gasp for a short, low-budget movie called Death’s Door (2009), in which he played a dying man in a grand old house confronted by a junkie career criminal played by one of the Irish theatre’s rising stars, Karl Sheils.
May died in 2007. McKenna is survived by four sons and a daughter, three brothers and five sisters.