Derek Chapman obituary: Gifted stage actor who turned to teaching in later life

Born: March 8th, 1951

Died: November 6th, 2022

Derek Chapman, who has died aged 71 after a long struggle with cancer, was one of the most distinctive and memorable stage actors of his generation.

He had a very particular claim to fame as having been the first actor in Ireland to appear naked on stage in a play featuring both male and female nudity, when he played the psychologically ill youth Strang in the Irish premiere of Peter Shaffer’s Equus, at the Gate Theatre in 1977. That year’s Christmas show, it ran into the new year for 100 performances. Astonishing as it may seem now, it was greeted by some with outrage, something foreseen by one of the Gate’s directors, Hilton Edwards, who overrode the author’s direction for “glaring white light” in favour of a more toned-down lighting design, as he feared the production would give rise to prurience.

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But it would be a disservice to Chapman for this controversy to distract from what had been an already auspicious start to his career. Joining the Abbey straight from Trinity College Dublin, in 1974, where he took an honours degree in English and German, and where he had been a leading light in Trinity Players, the student drama society, he performed regularly with the National Theatre thereafter for more than 25 years.

Starting in 1987, Chapman also worked for many years, up to 2002, with director, writer and opera composer Michael Scott. With Scott, his performances, in various roles, in the latter’s adaptation of the five plays by WB Yeats on the theme of Cuchulainn, The Cuchulainn Cycle, in 1996, Chapman regarded as the highlight of his career.

He told Scott in 1997 after the sell-out success of the Cycle, that “if this is to be my epitaph, I would be satisfied.” The show, premiered at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) the previous year in the RHA’s specially adapted basement, was revived in 1997 and then toured to the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, where it also sold out after rave reviews in the London press.

However, Chapman’s more lasting impact on Irish theatre may have been with Smock Alley Theatre Company, (not to be confused with the present Dublin theatre of that name) from 1984, when, working collaboratively with other theatre professionals, he both acted in and helped to direct several notable classic plays including Frocks, an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Clouds, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Congreve’s Love for Love, Macbeth and a theatrical version of Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queen, Spenser’s Lay, which toured to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the late 1980s.

Its style was deliberately over-the-top and even camp, and it resonated with critics and audiences alike

Smock Alley had had its origins in Chapman’s link-up in 1983 with actress Deirdra Morris, who had been seen by New York producer Cindy Kaplan in New York when the Royal Shakespeare Company were touring there in that year. Kaplan asked Morris if she could “get something together” for the producer’s summer festival at Howarth, New Jersey. The result was a “pocket” two-hander version of Romeo and Juliet, with Chapman and Morris acting and directing together. The resulting show was such a success that Joe Dowling, then still artistic director of the Abbey, asked to pair to perform it at the Peacock, the Abbey’s smaller space, in the spring of the following year, which they did.

The model was thus set up of a theatrical co-operative, specialising in making centuries-old classical dramas alive and interesting for modern audiences, run and produced by the collective members themselves. In the words at the time of Irish Times writer Ray Comiskey, it was recognised that, among the members, Chapman was equal but “primus inter pares”. Its style was deliberately over-the-top and even camp, and it resonated with critics and audiences alike.

Bitter disappointment

The Arts Council eventually withdrew Smock Alley’s funding, causing its closure in the late 1980s, something which was a deep psychological shock for Chapman personally, and a bitter disappointment from which, arguably, his ambition never really recovered.

There were echoes, however, of Smock Alley’s modus operandi in the final but-long lasting contribution Chapman made to the Irish arts, as a teacher of drama at the Inchicore College of Further Education from 1998 until 2011 where, with considerable success, he brought a totally new understanding of Shakespeare and other classical dramatists to generations of young adult students.

Chapman also introduced his students to a wide range of international theatre, including, especially, Bertolt Brecht, which he translated himself from the German originals

Roisin Flood, who was director of theatre and drama while he worked there, told The Irish Times this week: “Above all, Derek made learning fun. Many of the students were people who had slipped through the cracks while in [secondary] school and who hated Shakespeare. But Derek introduced them to every aspect of theatre, including music, design and costume-making.” After working with them for a few months, “they were transformed… these same students who had hated Shakespeare couldn’t wait to be cast in their year’s Shakespeare production… By using a subject in which they had become interested, they found a whole new way back into education.”

At Inchicore, Chapman also introduced his students to a wide range of international theatre, including, especially, Bertolt Brecht, which he translated himself from the German originals, and to phonetics and its application in live theatre and language learning. “He was a one-man university,” said Flood, “with his own vernacular and was very passionate about imparting knowledge”.

Derek Chapman was brought up in Dublin, the only son of Frederick Chapman, an insurance inspector, and his wife Phyllis (nee Doyle) a homemaker. Educated at Sandford National School and the High School before Trinity, he is survived by his partner Diarmuid Kelly, and his sisters, Hilary and Janet.