Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Many Canadian luminaries who brightened the Canadian and international stages over the past half century were lost in the twelve months that made up 2015.
Among those lost were:
Michael Burgess, 70, who played the role of Jean Valjean in more than 1,000 Toronto stage performances of Les Misérables, also performed in Blood Brothers and Man of La Mancha, Sept. 28 in Toronto after a battle with cancer.
Robin Phillips, 73, who led Ontario's Stratford Festival from 1975 to 1980 as the festival’s fourth artistic director, directing such actors as Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford, just outside of Stratford, July 25 after a prolonged illness. He began his career as an actor, and went on to head a few other Canadian theatre companies. He also directed the original Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway.
Don Harron, 90, a Canadian stage and television actor who was perhaps best known as a cast member of the long-running rural comedy sketch show “Hee Haw,” playing the country bumpkin newscaster Charlie Farquharson. He also co-wrote the script for the 1956 television musical "Anne of Green Gables," which was later adapted by Harron for the stage in 1965, Jan. 17 at his home in Toronto.
From “In Memorium: Playbill.com Remembers Those We Lost in 2015” by Robert Simonson for www.playbill.com.
Photos: Michael Burgess, Don Harron and Robin Phillips.
2015-12-22
Toronto: Three famed Canadians of the theatre whom we lost this year