NZ actor Ray Henwood died earlier this week aged 82.
NZ actor Ray Henwood died earlier this week aged 82.
Playwright Sir Roger Hall remembers his friendship with veteran actor Ray Henwood.
Ray Henwood was our Richard Burton: Welsh, very good-looking and a superb stage voice.
Auckland theatregoers will remember him recently in my play Last Legs and a few years earlier in Who Wants to be a 100? You don't often get the actors you have in mind while you are writing the play but in these ones I was lucky. Audiences loved the four male characters (Ray, Raymond Hawthorne, Mark Hadlow and George Henare) as they argued and fought. Ray and George Henare teamed up again for Heroes along with Ken Blackburn and between them the three of them presented a masterclass in character acting and comic timing.
(From left) Ray Henwood, George Henare and Raymond Hawthorne in Roger Hall's play Who Wants to be 100?
My relationship with Ray goes back to 1975. I had the script of my first stage play completed and was about to send it to Downstage (then Wellington's only professional theatre) but by then they had announced their year's programme. A few days later I was in Whitcoulls and Ray was there. I knew he was involved with a group setting up a new theatre.
"Ray, I've written a play. Would Circa be interested in having a look?"
A few weeks later there was a read-through at the Harry Squires Hostel; everyone fell apart laughing and Glide Time was scheduled for later in the year. Ray played Hugh, a homesick Welshman struggling to come to terms with New Zealand's way of life. He had one truly sad line, when his wife, almost paralysed with homesickness, goes back home. Hugh, heartbroken, says: "It's the little boy, see. She's taken the little boy." It brings tears to my eyes remembering him saying it.
A year or two later Ray told me that this was exactly what had happened to him when he came to New Zealand. Had I known, I could never have written it. But he stayed, met Carolyn, along came [his son] Dai, and New Zealand was all the richer for it.
Glide Time changed my life and it got even better with Middle Age-Spread; Ray playing Reg, a loquacious philandering Teachers College lecturer. He was superb. He was also the lead in two more plays around then (Fifty-Fifty and State of the Play), so to say he played a major part in my early career is an understatement. To have someone of his calibre in four of my first five plays was as good a start as one could wish for.
Ray was through and through a professional. He always knew his lines. Even on opening nights (when the occasional fluff can be forgiven). I can't recall ever hearing him take a prompt. This was partly his respect for the script. More than once I heard him say in public that the all-important thing in theatre was the script (no wonder I liked the guy!).
Louise Wallace, Mark Hadlow, Ray Henwood and Alison Quigan in Last Legs.
He had the voice. And he could project. One could hear every word. He had no temperament. I never saw him lose his temper or even get angry in rehearsals. He was never a character actor. No funny wigs or strange accents. But he convincingly played Einstein, Churchill, Stalin, Rutherford , Dylan Thomas and—inevitably—Richard Burton (Playing Burton) which he played not only within New Zealand but at the Sydney Opera House.
Many years ago, the Henwoods bought a bach in Piha and spent most Januarys there, driving up from Wellington. "Get a bigger car!" said Dai, so they did. Piha was the perfect place to forget theatre and the law. Ray plunged into the surf several times a day on his boogie board, they baked themselves in the sun and hosted visitors galore. We once took our nephew and niece, and Piha Rescue nothwithstanding in we all plunged. Scott and Laura remember it still.
Piha was a big part of their lives, and Dai's too. How proud Ray was of Dai, how he watched his progress, the failures and successes. One of the headlines about Ray's death read: "Dai Henwood's father dies". How Ray would have loved that.
