Waiting for Godot Matthew Kelly

Matthew Kelly

Pozzo

Matthew trained as an actor at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre before going on to work in repertory, major regional theatres across the country, the West End and television. He has received wide recognition for his work, winning a Royal Television Society Award for Best Performer in Drama in 2008, a silver medal at the New York International Programming Awards in 2007 (both for Cold Blood) and Best Actor at the 2004 Olivier Awards for his role as Lennie in Birmingham Rep’s production of Of Mice and Men.

Matthew has just finished playing Eddie Waters in Sean Holmes’ production of Comedians at the Lyric Hammersmith, and had success earlier this year as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Trafalgar Studios and Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare’s Globe.His other recent work includes: Howard Barker’s Victory at the Arcola Theatre; Salieri in Amadeus for John Doyle at Wilton’s Music Hall; Mirandolina at Manchester’s Royal Exchange; Kidder Harris in the poignant World War One play Forgotten Voices at the Riverside Studios and the Edinburgh Festival, and the Wicked Witch of the West in the RSC adaptation of The Wizard of Oz at Southampton. In 2008 he joined forces with his son, actor Matthew Rixon, to appear in Oh What a Lovely War (General Haig) at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton and Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (Hamm) at the Liverpool Everyman, and they ended the year as ugly sisters in Cinderella.

On television he presented a look at the history of forensic medicine in ITV’s Forensic Casebook and was featured in My Family at War, which was shown as part of the BBC’s anniversary commemoration.Matthew has appeared in several major television dramas: as serial killer Brian Wicklow in the ITV crime thriller series Cold Blood, the dancing master Old Mr Turveydrop in the BBC’s epic adaptation of Bleak House and Belzoni in Egypt: the Pharaoh and the Snowman and The Temple of the Sands, which were both shot on location in North Africa.  He has also been a guest star in Where the Heart Is and appeared in Agatha Christie’s Marple.An extensive list of theatre credits includes: the title role in Don Quixote with George Costigan at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; Malvolio in Twelfth Night on a national tour; Season’s Greetings, directed by Alan Ayckbourn; Petruchio in the Stratford Festival’s production of The Taming of the Shrew; Hermann K in Alan Bennett’s Kafka’s Dick at York Theatre Royal; Turai in Tom Stoppard’s Rough Crossing at Salisbury and Watford; the Doktor in The Cabinet of Doktor Caligari at the Nottingham Playhouse and the Lyric Hammersmith, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

His earlier work includes: Stanley in Funny Peculiar in the West End (a role he originally created at the Liverpool Everyman); Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton; The Surprise Party at the Nuffield, Southampton; Lennie in an earlier production of Of Mice and Men at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield; a double bill of Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy and The Private Ear; the Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms; the title role in a tour of the National Theatre’s The Pied Piper and the Cardinal in The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the Young Vic Company. Earlier acting credits on television range from Sheridan’s The Critic and Funny Man with Jimmy Jewel, Boon and Last of the Summer Wine, to the successful eighties series Holding the Fort with Patricia Hodge and two series of Channel 4’s sitcom Relative Strangers, which was nominated for an American Emmy Award. Matthew has made appearances in three films - Gabrielle and the Doodleman, Tribute, Showreel and Tortoise, and has a wide range of credits as a television presenter, with two series of Adventure of a Lifetime filmed in Nepal and Kenya, City Hospital and Stars in Their Eyes amongst the best known. He is also a regular voice-over artist narrating many documentary programmes, among them the After They Were Famous and The Funny Side series.This is Matthew’s third foray into Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: 1972 as a stage manager for David Suchet and Brian Croucher at Chester Gateway; 1986 as Vladimir with Ian Gelder for the Oxford Stage Company, and finally here in the West End where his years in variety being big and loud will, hopefully, at last come into their own.

< Back to Cast List