When he burst on to the stage of the new Abbey theatre in Dublin in 1967, Frank Grimes, who has died aged 78, was acclaimed as the finest young actor of his generation. That first impact was made as a 19-year-old in a revival of Frank O’Connor’s The Invincibles, a controversial piece about the assassination of the chief secretary of Ireland, and his deputy, in 1882.
But it was as the young Brendan Behan in Borstal Boy (1967) that Grimes hit the big time. Behan’s rollicking autobiographical novel was adapted by Frank McMahon, with Niall Toibín as the older Behan relating the story of the renegade roisterer on a bare stage.
