Charles Doran

Charles Doran (1 January 18775 April 1964) was an Irish actor, one of the last of the touring actor-managers in the tradition of Frank Benson, John Martin-Harvey and Ben Greet. Among those who joined his company at the start of their careers were Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Francis L Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.

Doran toured with Benson and other managements, and played in the West End before setting up his own company in 1920. He led it for eleven years, before leaving Britain to work in India. On his return he worked on stage and made occasional television appearances.

Life and career Doran was born on 1 January 1877 in Cork, the son of Charles Jenkins Doran. He was educated in Cork and privately. In 1899 he made his stage debut as a member of Frank Benson's touring company, in Julius Caesar at the Theatre Royal, Belfast.

In October 1910, returning to England, Doran played La Tribe in Count Hannibal at the New Theatre, after which he was Pistol in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Garrick to the Falstaff of Asche. For the next ten years he played in new, ephemeral works, interspersed with classics. Among his roles in the latter were Constantine Levin in Anna Karenina (1913); Douglas in Henry IV, part 1 and the Constable of France in Henry V. (1914) in London, and a variety of Shakespeare parts at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon (1919). Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Edith Sharpe, Norman Shelley, Abraham Sofaer, FrancisL Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.

In 1931 he went to India as director of Shakespeare's plays at the State Theatre in Jhalawar and then on to Bombay where he performed primarily in Shakespeare on the radio. His last Shakespearean role in the theatre was Time in The Winter's Tale (1951). He continued to act on stage in other parts until 1954.

Doran died in Folkestone on the south coast of England on 5 April 1964, at the age of 87. |