Robin Kingsland

Sir Wilfrid Robarts

Robin Kingsland originally trained as an English teacher, but thankfully became an actor before he could do any lasting damage to young minds. In a long career he has played leading roles in plays and musicals including Jerry in The Zoo Story, Mr. Craven in The Secret Garden, Hastings in She Stoops to Conquer, Lord Windermere in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Gerald Popkiss in Rookery Nook, DamonWildeve in The Return of the Native. Recent roles include Charlie Malloy in On the Waterfront and Victor Franz in Arthur Miller’s The Price. He played the title role in a camp spoof of Britain’s war-time wireless secret agent saga Dick Barton: Quantum of Porridge and boorish industrialist Mons Monsen in Ibsen’s neglected comedy The League of Youth. Robin has played both the younger and older lead roles in different productions of the same play – ironically, J.B. Priestley’s I Have Been Here Before!

Robin has several times portrayed real-life characters. He played John Lennon in Lennon and troubled Rat-Packer Peter Lawford in Rat Pack Confidential, both in London’s West End, and portrayed Bernard Shaw in Engaging Shaw for Vienna’s English Theatre in 2011.

When he is not acting, Robin is a writer who has over thirty self-illustrated children’s books to his name. He is also the author of innumerable episodes for children’s TV and a dozen of plays including Elementary Mr. Holmes, Sea of Silence, Prospero’s Children, Robin Hood, Viva Las Vegas and a published children’s musical, Porky Pies. More recently, his adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front and Around the World in Eighty Days have enjoyed successful British productions. Sleaze! – a Musical version of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure that he co-wrote in 2007 – is being restaged in the new year at London’s St.James Theatre. In 2010, PCUK – A Midsummer Night’s Remix, his own blank-verse, Hip-hop reworking of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, received rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has since written two Urban Pantomimes named Syn Da Rilla and Flo White and the Seven Dawgs.

Robin is delighted to be returning to this beautiful city and theatre with Witness For the Prosecution.