Michael Billington’s obituary of Michael Gambon recounts how he got his first professional role at the Gate theatre in Dublin by writing a letter full of supposed roles he had played in London. He was following good precedent: a very young Orson Welles did the same thing, turning up in person and claiming a distinguished past.
I saw Gambon in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land at the Gate. During the play Gambon showed his ability to improvise: mid-speech, a fly started buzzing loudly around him; rather than ignore it, he started trying to catch it in his fist – a spontaneous demonstration of his agility, and humour.
