T. P. McKenna
| T. P. McKenna | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Thomas Patrick McKenna 7 September 1929 Mullagh, County Cavan, Ireland |
| Died | 13 February 2011 (aged 81) Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, London, England |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1953–2009 |
| Spouse(s) | May White (m. 1955; d. 2007) |
| Children | 5 |
Thomas Patrick McKenna (7 September 1929 – 13 February 2011) was an Irish actor, born in Mullagh, County Cavan.
Thomas Patrick McKenna was born at Mullagh, Co.Cavan, Ireland, in 1929 and educated at Mullagh School and St.Patrick's College, Cavan, where he became a protegee of Fr.Vincent Kennedy who featured him regularly in the annual productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operas. He was a noted boy soprano and sang in Cavan Cathedral, but later would become a keen member of the school's Gaelic Football squad representing St Patrick's in the final of the All Ireland colleges competition in 1948.
After leaving school he joined the Ulster Bank in Grannard, Co.Longford, and worked in banking for the next five years. However, he remained set on becoming an actor and when he received a posting to Dublin he soon made a mark on city's amateur scene appearing with the Rathmines & Rathgar Operatic Society and the Dublin Shakespeare Society. His employers were not impressed by his extra curricular activities and in 1953 he was posted to the remote town of Killeshandra in County Cavan. McKenna refused to go and resigned his position.
McKenna made his stage debut at the tiny Pike Theatre in Dublin in 1953 as John Buchanan in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. He played a season at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, with Anew McMaster's Shakespearean company and was a member of The Gas Theatre Company directed by Godfrey Quigley.
Through family contacts he sought an interview with the managing director of the Abbey Theatre, Ernest Blythe. Despite Blythe's concerns that 'his nose was too long and he would grow fat'. he eventually become a permanent member of the company in 1954 and would remain there for the next eight years performing over seventy roles.
In 1963 he secured a short leave of absence to go to London (St.Martin's Theatre) with the Gate Theatre's production of Stephen D, an adaptation of Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by Hugh Leonard which had been a hit of that season's Dublin Theatre Festival.
McKenna stayed on when the London run ended, never returning to the Abbey company, and soon found work as the Irishman O'Keefe in J.P.Donleavy's The Ginger Man (Ashcroft, Croydon). Then he went to the Royal Court Theatre in Lindsay Anderson's revival of Julius Caesar (1964); the next year he took over as the Burglar in Shaw's Too Good to be True (Garrick).
He joined Stuart Burge's company at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1968 playing Trigorin in The Seagull and Sir Joseph Surface in Sheridan's School For Scandal, both directed by Jonathan Miller. In 1969 he created the role of Fitzpatrick in David Storey's 'The Contractor' directed by Lindsay Anderson at the Royal Court Theatre, London. The production later transferred to the Fortune Theatre and ran for over a year. In 1973 he took on the role of Andrew Wyke opposite his friend Donally Donnelly in the Irish premiere of Peter Shaffer's 'Sleuth'. The production played to acclaim at the Opera House, Cork, and at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin where it broke box office records.
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