In memoriam – Neale Warrington
1 August 1930–7 August 2025
There are some people who have such a profound influence on your life – and especially a life in the Theatre – that it is impossible to separate them from almost every single moment and memory of your journey. Neale Alan Warrington, who has passed away in Melbourne, was one such person in my life. And the lives of many, many, others.
Neale was many things – an infuriating perfectionist; an indelible and consummate clown; the master of physical comedy; a loyal, non-judgemental confidant, friend and ally; a master set building craftsman; an entrepreneur who dared to dream big – really big – and always see it through; and a devotee of the works of William Shakespeare unlike anyone I had ever, or have since, met. But above all else, he was a great teacher – of language, the craft, and life itself.
And while there were certainly many complex and complicated times in his company, it was all about his love for the Theatre – and it was in the Theatre that Neale was the unmatched master of vision, passion, ambition, determination, and skill.
I vividly remember working away in his tiny office/bunker at the home he shared with the divine Marie – his devoted wife, co-conspirator, and the great love of his life – as he dreamed of starting The Australian Shakespeare Company (ASC). I was the snarly and mostly objectionable young poof who argued with him endlessly about the pointlessness of Shakespeare for Australian audiences. Neale, always politely and never as dismissive, condescending or as patronising as he might otherwise have had every right to be, would just ignore me – and power on with his vision, while I worked on designing his letterheads.
Shakespeare, Neale believed, could teach us all something about the human condition – whether we knew it and understood it, or not. And he was, as he always infuriatingly was, absolutely correct. His grand vision for an Australian Shakespeare Company began in 1982, with co-founders Ivan Calnin, Laurence Balshaw-Blake, David Peake, Phillip Beckensall, Barry Robinson, Barry Berger and Rex Perry.
Early on in the life of the company, I recall that he was deeply wounded when his ‘right’ to use the name ‘The Australian Shakespeare Company’ was called into question by parasites within our mutant arts bureaucracy, but they had seriously under-estimated Neale’s determination. I remember that the hurt was palpable, but the fear that he would eventually be required to relinquish the name only inspired him more passionately. While it was certainly a heady distraction from his tireless efforts to establish the company, he refused to budge – and instead, came up with the ingenious idea to start an annual Shakespeare Festival at the Victorian town of Stratford (on the river Avon). In their published ‘History of the Festival’, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival recalls that:
“In 1989, Neale Warrington, from the Australian Shakespeare Company and the former Shire of Avon, initiated discussions on how a Festival could build on the village name of Stratford and its links to William Shakespeare. The first festival was held in 1991 presenting ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by a local theatre group and ‘Twelfth Night’ by the Australian Shakespeare Company under the direction of Neale Warrington. The Australian Shakespeare Company returned in 1992 and 1994 bringing ‘King Lear’ and ‘Hamlet’ to Stratford. During these early years, the festival consisted of this performance over three nights and two days. The Festival has run continuously since 1996 … and has grown to include over 20 different events being performed over a two-and-a-half-week period.”
Another of his incredible characteristics, was his power of forgiveness. Passionate and heated disagreements were always signed, sealed and forgotten with a generous smile, a genuine hug, and an unquestionable determination to keep going regardless. As a tyro publicist for the ASC’s ‘Macbeth’, I had set up a photo call in the grounds of a local church. As the stars prepared for their big moment, Neale suggested that they pose from a moment shortly before Lady Macbeth dies. Quite stunned, I said “Does Lady Macbeth die in this?”. Neale smiled and covered my ignorance with a generous flourish – a broad, sweeping gesture that immediately ensured I was both suddenly and immediately inconsequential to the occasion, and the reason for it. He could spin facts, fantasies, and faux pas on the head of a pin – with a genuine and convincing charm.
Neale was also way ahead of his time – a consequence of his rigorous training for the stage in repertory and as a member of the celebrated ‘Crazy Gang’ (as an ever-reliable General Understudy) in London. In 1981, before gender-blind casting was, well, let’s face it, even a thing, Neale cast the sensational Sylvia Picton as Mr Toad in his production of A. A. Milne’s ‘Toad of Toad Hall’ at the (then) brand new Karralika Theatre at the Ringwood Cultural Centre.
Before almost every regional Victorian town had its own Arts Centre, Neale packed his cast (which included me) into a bus he had bought to tour regional Victoria in the peculiar ‘Friends and Neighbours’ – where we would perform to a row – yes, ‘a’ row – of keen local theatregoers with blankets wrapped around their legs, in their massive school gymnasiums. Then, the only stages within a hundred miles of the place. The bus was retrofitted to include seats for us up the front, and our set (concertina flats) and props that were tucked almost too miraculously into the back. Robinvale, just one of our stops along the way, had never seen anything like it!
The ASC would also continue apace, with Neale’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of ‘Hamlet’, with Justin Harris-Parslow in the title role, travelling to, among other destinations, Adelaide’s Her Majesty's Theatre and Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre in June 1994. In 1996, determined to anchor the ASC’s repertoire deeply in the classic theatre literature canon, Neale produced and directed James Goldman’s masterpiece – ‘The Lion in Winter’ – at The National Theatre in St Kilda.
The last time I saw Neale, he had almost completely lost his eyesight – but certainly none of his distinctive wit, his great love of a laugh and a shared memory, and his quaint cockney walk that he would perform on a regular basis when he was feeling touched … or short of words – even if only ever momentarily. And it is our role, as reliable witnesses to the pre-internet age, to ensure that creative genius, and strength of character are not consigned to the footnotes of history – because without Neale Warrington, for so many of us – there would be no ‘history’ to speak of.
None.
Geoffrey Williams
Sources
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