Actor wove his magic on the stage
Ray Henwood actor b January 15, 1937 d August 26, 2019
Ray Henwood may have left the valleys of his Welsh homeland decades ago, but he was never too far from its artistic influence. During his long career on the stage he would take on the roles of those two creative Welsh giants, Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton.
Playing the latter in 2001, he was directed by Burton’s great-nephew Guy Masterson, who described Henwood’s performance simply as ‘‘perfect’’. ‘‘He was able to show what made the actor such a legend with one look.’’
Henwood, who has died aged 82, played many a great role – from Albert Einstein to Joseph Stalin – over a career that spanned more than 50 years.
Always prepared, he was a stickler for learning his lines and was said never to have needed a prompt.
He stoically acted through earthquakes and always kept his composure when scenes went awry.
While playing Hamlet he continued unflustered with a monologue despite the appearance of a troop of police who had found their way mistakenly on to the stage of Downstage Theatre through an open fire escape.
He was a jobbing actor who was able to make a living from his craft, appearing on television, most notably in Roger Hall’s Gliding On, and in films including
Daughters of Heaven, Lord of the Rings
and The Hobbit. But the stage was his great love. Live theatre was where he thrived and created his magic.
Henwood, the third of four sons, was born in his grandparents’ pub in Swansea, south Wales, and raised there until they were bombed out of it in 1942.
A love of drama came early for Henwood, who performed plays at his local church and later at Swansea Grammar School, where he was taught by teachers who had tutored writer Dylan Thomas, a figure who would be a thread weaving in and out of his acting career.
Acting was an intoxicating pastime, he recalled many years later. But it wasn’t his first choice of career. Science beckoned early on, and he went on to earn a degree in chemistry from the University of Wales in Swansea. He was just a few papers shy of a PhD in biochemistry.
After responding to an advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement for maths, chemistry and physics teachers in New Zealand, he was wooed halfway across the world. He never regretted that great leap of faith.
He even kept a model of the Ruahine, the ship that brought him out, once saying it reminded him that coming here was ‘‘the best decision I have ever made and ever will make’’.
Such was his love of his adopted country he became an avid All Blacks supporter, despite the fact his own grandfather played for Wales. However, when the All Blacks played Wales he was known to be rather fickle. You can take the boyo out of the valleys . . .
He took up a position at Mana College,
Porirua, in 1962 and taught there for four years before working as a toxicologist at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where he helped introduce the breathalyser. He would go on to write a book on drug use in this country, in which he likened the Narcotics Act of 1964 to ‘‘using a cannon to kill flies’’.
Henwood described 1960s New Zealand as a magic place. In a 2016 interview he recalled being asked questions he had never been asked before: ‘‘Do you ski? Would you like to join us on our boat? I suddenly realised that out here the class system I had left in Wales didn’t exist. In those days it really was an exciting place to be. You could do anything.’’
That proved to be true for Henwood, who was a co-founder of Circa Theatre, the city’s second professional theatre, established in 1976.
He had scoped out the theatre scene on his arrival and performed in amateur plays in Tawa and Mana.
It was on the stage in one of these local productions that he met his wife Carolyn. She was a ring-in when the actress playing opposite him became ill. They married in 1969 and had a son, Dai, of whose career as a comedian Henwood was endlessly proud.
Henwood went on to perform at the Unity Theatre in Wellington, recorded radio plays and performed in the first play that opened the city’s first professional theatre, Downstage, in 1964.
After a decade moonlighting on the stage while maintaining his day job, he finally committed to his craft.
Circa Theatre became like a second home to Henwood and Carolyn, who set
up the co-operative theatre with other Wellington thespians, including Susan Wilson and Ross Jolly.
It started out as a 50-seat theatre and was run on the smell of an oily rag. Henwood and his cohorts were no job snobs, fulfilling not only the roles on stage but behind the scenes, manning the phones and selling tickets.
When the theatre relocated to a new venue on the waterfront 18 years later, Henwood recalled having to distract the governor-general, Dame Cath Tizard, with champagne and homemade hors d’oeuvres on opening night while other Circa members, actors and son Dai, were hammering sets and glueing cushions, trying to finish off the auditorium before curtain-up.
He got his first TV break in 1969 in his role as a DSIR scientist showing traffic officers how to use the breathalyser. Around the same time he was appearing in an ad for the Moro chocolate bar, which earned him lifelong fame as the ‘‘Moro Man’’.
But it was Sir Roger Hall’s Gliding On
– a spinoff of Hall’s play Glide Time – that propelled him into the nation’s living rooms. The show’s affectionate portrayal of a bunch of disaffected, bickering staff in the depths of a nameless government department’s ‘‘stores branch’’ was a huge success and ran for five seasons.
Henwood played Hugh, a homesick Welshman struggling to come to terms with New Zealand’s way of life.
He was successful over the ditch, too. After a New Zealand sell-out season of his one-man show No Good Boyo, based on the writings of Dylan Thomas, he took it to the Sydney Festival in 1981. He performed it at the Seymour Centre’s 200-seat venue, but rave reviews saw it transfer to the 800-seater within days.
Henwood, who also directed for Circa, had success with other one-hander shows, memorably A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Playing Burton, which he toured to
Australia in 2003.
His contribution to theatre as an actor and as a member of the Circa Council was huge, says Hall.
He performed in four of Hall’s first five plays, including Middle Age Spread and
Glide Time. ‘‘To say he played a role in my career is an understatement,’’ Hall says, joking that, after Henwood appeared in so many of his plays, all his contracts with theatres had a clause stating that Henwood had to be in the cast.
Circa mainstay and longstanding friend Ross Jolly recalled the first time he saw Henwood on the stage. ‘‘He was playing the lead in Serjeant Musgrave’s
Dance and he was incandescent. A thespian extraordinaire.’’
He was a warm and generous human being, but he could be fiery and passionate too. ‘‘When he was like that we would just say, ‘Oh, that’s just Ray being a little bit Welsh.’ ‘‘
The Circa unit was tight, Jolly says – a big ‘‘dysfunctional family’’. It was certainly a constant backdrop to Henwood’s life as an actor.
He even kept the original key to Circa’s Harris St venue, saying it reminded him of the huge decision they made to form a new theatre in the capital.
When a theatrical friend told him back in the 1970s that he wished the audiences were bigger, he responded: ‘‘I told him it’s our job to do it. The audiences will come. And eventually, my God, they came.’’ –
‘‘I suddenly realised that out here the class system I had left in Wales didn’t exist. In those days it really was an exciting place to be. You could do anything.’’