David Firth

David Firth read English at Sussex University and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He started his professional career with the RSC and spent three seasons with them playing in Stratford, London, the USA and Europe. In 1970 in his first musical 1776 at the Albery Theatre he was nominated Most Promising Actor in the Plays and Players Awards of that year for his performance as the Courier. This was followed by spells of rep in Leicester and Coventry, where amongst other roles he played Orlando and Mercutio.

He joined the National Theatre in 1973 and parts there included Yasha in Michael Blakemore’s production of The Cherry Orchard and Lucio in Measure For Measure, directed by Jonathan Miller. A year at the Queens Theatre followed playing Attilio in Zefferelli’s production of Saturday Sunday Monday. After the Trevor Griffiths play AIl Good Men at the Young Vic, he was in the Jonathan Miller Shakespeare season at Greenwich, playing Parolles in Alls Well and repeating his Lucio in Measure. He has twice played Nicholas Nickleby in the Sherrill/Brahms Nickleby and Me at Stratford East and Chichester and spent a year in Side By Side By Sondheim at the Wyndhams and The Garrick.

Other musicals have included, Gigi at Leicester Haymarket Wonderland at the Kings Head and the revues Happy as a Sandbag (Leicester) and Betjemania which played for a season in New York. He spent a season with the Old Vic Company playing in the double bill Padlock and Miss In Her Teens and played Tasman in the Charles Marowitz version of Hedda Gabler at The Roundhouse.

Other West End appearances have been in The Chairman at the Globe in 1976 and the Jonathan Miller Hamlet at the Warehouse and The Piccadilly in 1982. In 1983 he twice appeared at the Adelphi: as Arthur Miller in Marilyn and Jack idle in Poppy. His next West End appearance was as Algy in the benignly disastrous musical version of The Importance Of Being Ernest which made a brief visit to the Ambassadors Theatre.

He has recently appeared in both of the highly successful adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan by Ned Sherrin and Alistair Beaton on the South Bank; The Ratepayers Iolanthe transferring for a season to the Phoenix Theatre.

He has made numerous television appearances in productions as diverse as Troilus and Cressida to Yes Minster. He is currently to be seen in the LWT series Drummonds. He also writes for Television, but last year completed his first stage musical, with John Owen Edwards, Canary Blunt which played two successful seasons at the Latchmore Theatre, with an album shortly to be released on TEM records.