The character actor Desmond Barrit, who has died aged 81, was renowned for playing both of Shakespeare’s Falstaffs – in Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor – for the Royal Shakespeare Company; for a string of leading performances at the National Theatre including in two Alan Bennett plays, The History Boys (as an inspirational teacher) and The Habit of Art (as WH Auden), in the wake of Richard Griffiths in the first productions; and for three stints as the Wizard in the musical Wicked, in the West End of London, at the Apollo Victoria theatre.
He also played the US vice-president Dick Cheney in a quiet, measured performance at the National in David Hare’s brilliant Stuff Happens (2004), a White House history play with elements of documentary and verbatim reportage in response to the Iraq war. The director was Nicholas Hytner, who had been responsible for kickstarting Barrit’s career by casting him as an innkeeper (with hunchback and withered leg) in his 1985 Chichester production of The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Donald Sinden as Sir Percy Blakeney. “Rung any good bells lately?” inquired Sir Percy in Beverley Cross’s zingy rewrite of Baroness Orczy’s French Revolution warhorse.
