Chester writer Brian Gorman unveils new play about actor Patrick McGoohan

Jan 13 2011 Flintshire Chronicle

Cult TV actor Patrick McGoohan, who died in 2009, is best known as the star of the ground-breaking 1960s series The Prisoner.

One of the star’s greatest admirers, Chester’s Brian Gorman, has now written a play about the actor which comes to the city’s Forum Studio Theatre tonight (Thursday, January 13) at 8pm.

Everyman: The Story Of Patrick McGoohan – The Prisoner looks at the life of the theatre, television, and film star.

Gorman, who also plays a version of McGoohan and his character Number Six, performed a specially rehearsed reading of Everyman last year in Manchester, at The Lass O'Gowrie pub, and played to a full house.

The reading garnered a glowing review from Brian Watson for The Unmutual website – a major Prisoner fan group.

Gorman believes that a theatrical tribute to the star of such cult TV favourites as Danger Man and The Prisoner is long overdue.

He said: “McGoohan was a brilliant actor. In common with the great Orson Welles, who he cited as a major influence, he was also a fiercely uncompromising individual who took real artistic chances, and divided the critics."

Patrick McGoohan was born in New York, but spent less than a year there before his family relocated to their native Ireland.

Several years later, they moved to England, where McGoohan caught the acting bug in Sheffield, and worked his way up to leading roles at the local professional repertory theatre.

He was the first choice to play James Bond in 1962 but turned down the role of a lifetime, due to his distaste for the depiction of gratuitous violence and casual sex.

While Bond was smashing cinema box office records, McGoohan became an international television star as secret agent John Drake in Danger Man; who rarely used a gun and politely declined the numerous advances of beautiful women.

After several hugely successful years, McGoohan tired of playing Drake, and persuaded legendary producer Lew Grade to back his new project The Prisoner and allow him full creative control.

The series made McGoohan the highest paid actor on British TV when he played an un-named secret agent who attempts to resign his job, only to be kidnapped and imprisoned in a mysterious village from which there seems no escape.

Everybody in The Village is assigned a number, and McGoohan is referred to as Number Six, but refuses to conform; spending each of the series’ 17 episodes attempting to outwit his captors.

The show became a massive cult hit with its flamboyant action, imaginative stories, and surreal style, and was recently remade for ITV with Sir Ian McKellen starring as the enigmatic and menacing Number Two.

McGoohan also starred in a variety of successful films including Silver Streak, Ice Station Zebra, and Mel Gibson’s oscar-winning Braveheart.

He won two Emmy awards for acting in the Columbo TV series, and was even immortalised in an episode of The Simpsons.

Chester-based Brian Gorman is from Wigan and is a writer, artist, and actor. He was a familiar face at the Chester Gateway Theatre, where he worked in the box office for 12 years.

He was also seen in Tip Top Productions' Bouncers (as Lucky Eric), and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (as Mr Boo).

He has designed posters and brochure illustrations for the Chester Gateway and had work published in the Liverpool Daily Post, The Big Issue, and Green World (the magazine of The Green Party).

He is currently working on a professional commission to produce a series of graphic novels on Manchester bands.

As an actor he has played leading roles in corporate and educational dramas, music videos, and has just played the notorious mass murderer, Thomas Hamilton, in an upcoming television reconstruction of the 1996 Dunblane massacre.

He has also played the main villain Viktor Toxikoff in award-winning director Chris Stone’s James Bond-inspired music video The Rebel, for the band The Amateurs.

Gorman first studied acting at Wigan College of Technology in the 1980s, and was fascinated to later discover that Sir Ian McKellen had grown up just yards from the college theatre.

Onboard as the production’s official adviser is Robert Fairclough. Robert is a freelance writer, designer and producer.

His work on The Prisoner includes the book The Prisoner: The Official Companion to the Classic TV Series, editing two volumes of The Original Scripts for the classic series and graphic design work on the recent AMC remake.

There is a word of warning from Brian Gorman for anyone expecting a straight-forward story of McGoohan’s life: “In keeping with McGoohan’s surreal work on The Prisoner, we will be playing around with time, as well as the character itself.

“Patrick McGoohan will be a mix of the real man and Number Six and the whole piece will be presented in the style of an episode of The Prisoner."

Entry to tonight’s performance is £6, and tickets can be booked by telephoning 01244 341296, or book online at www.chestertheatre.co.uk.