Robin Ramsay (actor)

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Robin Ramsay (born May 31, 1939 in Melbourne, Victoria) is an Australian actor of television, film and stage.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Ramsay is the grandson of Kiwi shoe polish founder William Ramsay and father of Robina Ramsay, an internationally ranked dressage rider, and Tamasin Ramsay, a PhD scholar at Monash University.^[1]^[4]

1 Career
2 Involvement with the Brahma Kumaris sect
3 Select filmography
4 External links
5 References

[edit] Career

Ramsay studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1957. He worked briefly for the BBC then returned to Australia. He joined the fledgling Union Theatre Company, in Melbourne, who's members included Zoe Caldwell and Barry Humphries. He starred in th first Adelaide Festival in 1960, in 'Moon on a Rainbow Shawl'.

He went to the United States in 1961 and joined the Theatre Company of Boston. He then toured the country in The National Repertory Theatre, with Eva Le Galliene and Faye Emerson.

In 1964 he took over the role of Fagin in the hit musical "Oliver!" on Broadway, a role he played for a further two years in New York, followed by a record-breaking national tour. He shared the bill with 'The Beatles' singing a song from the musical, in a subsequently memorable edition of the Ed Sullivan Show. In 1966 Ramsay recreated his role of Fagin for a West End revival of "Oliver!", with Marti Webb as Nancy.

Returning to Australia, Ramsay's role as Charlie Cousens, the dodgy real estate agent, on Bellbird, Australia's first successful television soap opera, garnered him considerable public notice. A regular character on the show from August of 1967, Ramsay decided to leave in May of 1968 to take the role of Fagin in a Japanese stage production of Oliver!.

When the show's producers decided to kill off his character, staging what has been described as "one of the most-watched and best-remembered moments in Australian TV history",^[5] fans wrote protesting his death and even sent flowers to his funeral.

Ramsay returned to the theatre playing the controversial priest Daniel Berriganin the Trial of the Catonsville Nine in Sydney. He went on to play Pontius Pilate in 's original production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He was in the first production at the opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1972: playing MacHeath in The Threepenny Opera. Polly Peachum was played by Pamela Stephenson. Ramsay spent the next few years as a leading actor with the Sydney Theatre Company the Melbourne Theatre Company, and working in film and television. He has twice won the Melbourne Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. He was in 'Medea' the opening production of the Melbourne Arts Centre, playing opposite Zoe Caldwell.

In 1977, with Rodney Fisher, he developed his first solo show , drawn from the writings of Henry Lawson The Bastard From The Bush. This refocussing on Lawson as a sophisticated shortstory writer and diarist, rather than as a 'bush poet', radically altered Australia's view of their favourite icon. The play toured to Riverside Studios in London, and played extended seasons at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre and the Victorian Arts Centre. The production won the Australian Arts Award

In the early 1980's Ramsay was commissioned to create a new solo show celebrating the life and times of Rabindranath Tagore, India's Nobel Prize winning poet: titled Borderland. The invitation came from the Indian High Commission in Canberra. The play was performed in Australia, then toured to more than 60 countries in support of the Brahma Kumaris sect, in tandem with 'The Bastard From The Bush'. The tour was sponsored by the Australian Government through its Cultural Relations Department, the British Council and the Indian Government, as well as Australian High Commissions and Australian Embassies abroad

Ramsay then formed his own chamber theatre company Open Secret, and continued touring internationally, developing new productions, notably Vikram Seth's Beastly Tales from Here and There and incorporating local musicians into the company's presentations. His new solo play The Accidental Mystic, high times on the Indian ashram trail, written by his wife Barbara Bossert, opened at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre in 1995, after seasons in Sydney and the Edinburgh Festival. The play toured to London and throughout India. Ramsay was nominated for a Melbourne Critics Circle Best Actor Award for his performance

In 1994 he played Julie Christie's husband, Wilf Barlow, in the miniseries 'Dada is Death', and toured to the Tokyo International Theatre Festival with the Playbox Theatre.

[edit] Involvement with the Brahma Kumaris sect

Ramsay became interest in spiritual matters from the 1980's and he joined the Brahma Kumaris, while still performing with 'Open Secret' and elsewhere. From 2001-2006 he lived at a Brahma Kumaris retreat center near Wilton New South Wales. His first feature film as a Producer/Director called Tao of the Traveller, is based on the book by this wife and Brahma Kumaris follower Barbara Bossert Ramsay is being used as a promotion by BKWSU centers [1]. The film features Brahma Kumaris followers Clarke Peters of HBO's The Wire, Lucinda Drayton of Bliss, and Ramsay's younger daughter Tamasin Ramsay, also a Brahma Kumaris follower, in the lead role. Ramsay recreated his Tagore show Borderland recently in London, as part of the Brahma Kumaris’ contribution to London's “India Now” celebrations [2].