Veteran actor Neville Williams deserved better

Dear Editor,

On Thursday, April 8, I got a Whatsapp message from my good friend, playwright Harold Bascom, who asked me to confirm that his close friend, Neville Williams, had died last Monday in an accident. I typed the name Neville Williams into Google and this is what I got:

News Room Guyana: ‘Elderly man dies in Providence Accident.’

Stabroek News: ‘Herstelling pensioner, 86, dies after being struck by car.’

INews Guyana: ‘Pensioner killed in Providence accident’

Guyana Times: ‘86-YOld killed in Providence accident.’

The media entities had gleaned all their information solely from the police blotter.

No reporter, it seemed, had visited the home of the ‘Elderly man/Herstelling pensioner/86-Y-Old’. Had anyone done so, they would surely have learned that there was much more to this ‘elderly man’ than was reported. Neville Williams was one of Guyana’s veteran actors, having appeared in numerous plays at the Theatre Guild and the National Cultural Centre. He also had a role in the Rohit Jagessar film ‘Guiana1838.’

I first saw Neville in a play called ‘Driftwood’ at the NCC. Something about him—a certain elegance— stood out; so, when Harold Bascom was seeking an actor for the role of a father, whose son had contracted AIDS (‘Home for Christmas’), I immediately thought of Neville Williams. Neville would subsequently have prominent roles in other notable plays that Harold staged. Neville Williams (or ‘Burkie’ as I sometimes called him, because of his role in Home for Christmas), was intelligent, intense in his theatre roles, dedicated to his craft, unpretentious and down to earth with his friends.

I hope that the theatre fraternity and the media can pay fitting tribute to Neville Williams, the actor. He deserves better than being relegated to a story from a police blotter. Sincerely,

Michael Jordan