Okay, so Tumblr has its uses...

[lost_spook]

I will explain later (with much waffling no doubt) but an anon on Tumblr directed me to a bunch of James Maxwell stuff from his college days - including his yearbook entry from 1949. Do you want to see a very young James Maxwell? Because you're going to if you look under the cut...

Comments

[evelyn_b]

That is completely adorable. I don't even know James Maxwell properly, but I know that much. And fake facial hair, a problem with its roots in earliest youth!

[lost_spook]

:lol; yes. And thanks! Earlier on in the week I was just grumbling at the world and myself for getting interested in old actors and being unable to find pics of them when they were young... and now look

[evelyn_b]

There's no need to be sorry! You've posted enough James Maxwell pictures that I have a positive fondness for him, despite never having seen him in any actual TV (yet? I will get to Underworld eventually). Does the theatre he founded still exist?

[lost_spook]

Well, unless you watched the whole of the Raffles pilot, because he's Inspector Mackenzie in it, but, heh, sorry! (Not sorry?)

And, yes, the theatre is Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. The group believed strongly that theatre should be taken out of London where it could be part of a community and they also wanted to change the physical shape of it, in order to remove the barriers between the actors and the audience - so it is (or certainly was) the largest round theatre in the country & happily seems to still be going strong and living up to all the original ideals. :-)

[evelyn_b]

Oh wow, that theatre is really cool in a lot of ways! I wish I could go see "Blake Remixed" next week.

I should watch the rest of that pilot, really. The casting was good and it seemed reasonably well done.

[lost_spook]

It is, isn't it? I had heard the name before I started looking into James Maxwell, but I'd no idea. I hope that one day I get well enough to go, because I'm very intrigued by what the experience is like there - I gather it really is quite something! (My general net surfing on the subject suggests that while some professional theatre people are still a bit iffy on the idea of theatre-in-the-round, especially on that scale, there seems to be a huge ground-level affection for it from the people of Manchester and the region, and those who've been to see things there. One of my flist has been a few times and says it's excellent. And, heh, apparently they even had a sleepover there sometime recently! Including a ghost walk, so presumably they all had to say hi to JM.)