VERSATILITY is a valuable part of a good actor's make-up, but there is, in a sense, a down side to this gift. Had Andrew Keir not possessed this talent to such a notable degree, his name could well have been even better known to the general public than it is today. Other actors from what we regarded - and still do - as the golden age of Scottish acting - showed off their genius in such a way, stepping across the boundary into pantomime and review, for instance, that we are sometimes inclined to think of the actor rather than the role played.
Andrew Keir, however, was able - it would almost seem effort-
lessly - to immerse himself in whatever character he played, fitting himself into the fabric of the play concerned without giving an obtrusive starry performance, however strong the role.
This is all the more remarkable given the fact that he did not come from a theatrical background, transforming himself by sheer talent and hard work from a 14-year-old miner at Shotts into a fully professional actor in the space of half a dozen or so short years. Developing a taste for amateur acting along with some of the boys from the pit, he graduated to Unity Theatre, and by 1947 had joined the Citizens', becoming a part of the great flowering of talent which, in effect, was the Scottish National Theatre of its time. Andrew's first Gorbals appearance was in John Knox by James Bridie, father of the Citizens', and he then set about perfecting his craft. Quite simply, perhaps, he could have taken the easy way into his profession,
concentrating on, say, the fine plays of Joe Corrie, not far removed from his own past. Instead, by 1951, he was playing Orlando in As You Like It, a straight role without any of the helpful concealments behind which an inexperienced actor could hide, and this in a rigorously disciplined theatre long before it was considered permissible to speak Shakespeare in any old accent.
Although his roles grew bigger and more varied, Keir profited by taking everything that came his way, switching from Shakespeare to the couthy pleasures of Bunty Pulls The Strings and the knockabout antics of the two Merry Men in Little Red Riding Hood, successor to the legendary TinTock Cup: it may seem, however, that the ex-miner should fit so well into the manners of aristocracy and royalty. In 1953 he was strikingly handsome Prince Albert to Iris Russell's Victoria in Victoria Regina, and in the same year he took upon himself the Flodden-Doomed Mantle of James IV in William Douglas Hume's The Thistle And The Rose. One week he would be Cleante in Tartoffe, the next the Baillie in T M Watson Bachelors Are Bold. He could catch admirably the smoky magic of the warlock Michael Scott in The Warld's Wonder, or the homely wisdom of Bridie's Mr Gillie. Beyond ''The Gorbals'' he took over John
The Common Weal in the 1951 production of The Three Estates. In 1956 Keir joined the Henry Sherek Players, shuttling between Edinburgh and Glasgow: one premier that season was Voyage Ashore, Alexander Reid's wittily poetic Scots version of the return home of Odysseus. Keir played the gallant wandering warrior bent on disposing of the wooers who beset his supposed widow.
Which reminds us that Andrew Keir used the passage of time to enrich his talents by taking roles which gradually became more mature, leading into a vast amount of film and TV work, for, having devoted the days of his youth to the Scottish stage, it was time for him to move further afield, although an early TV appearance came from the stage of the Citizens' Theatre in Barrie's The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, the first ever to be beamed from Scotland.
Stage appearances became fewer, but one must be mentioned, supreme example of his versatility, when he took the role of Willie Morgan in Lionel Bart's Maggie May in London in 1964. (He can be heard singing on the LP recording). Some theatregoers, however, will remember him best storming the barricades of Music Hall by bringing Hector MacMillan's The Sash into Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre.
His many TV roles included the ITV series, Adam Smith, but he also made his mark on the big screen, now a middle-aged character man, but by no means always in supporting roles. His films ranged from The Maggie and The Brave Don't Cry, a semi documentary based on the Knockshinnock pit disaster, to Dracula, Prince of Darkness.
Finally the Grand Old Man: one of his most recent appearances was in the TV serial Strathblair, and, although the story may have faded from the mind, his performance stayed rock solid there, durable as the landscape against which it had its being. Much is being spoken and written about the future of Scottish theatre; if it is to develop as we hope, it will need to keep its eyes on the skill, vision, devotion, and sheer professionalism reflected in careers like that of Andrew Keir.
An appreciation by
DR TONY PATERSON
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