Robin Ramsay is an Australian former television, film and stage actor. He appeared in the rural series Bellbird as Charlie Cousins, in which he was best known for the scene in which he falls to his death from a wheat silo.

Early life and education

Ramsay studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1957. He worked in England briefly before returning to Australia in 1958.

Personal life

Ramsay is father of Robina Ramsay, an internationally ranked dressage rider,^[1] and anthropologist Tamasin Ramsay.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Theatre

After returning to Australia, Ramsay joined the fledgling Union Theatre Company in Melbourne. He starred in Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, produced for the first Adelaide Festival in 1960.

He has played roles in theatre locally starting from 1957^[2] and then went to the United States in 1961 and joined the Theatre Company of Boston. He then toured the country in The National Repertory Theatre, with Eva Le Gallienne and Faye Emerson.

In 1964, he took the role of Fagin in the hit musical Oliver! on Broadway, a role he played for a further two years in New York, followed by a record-breaking national tour. He shared the bill with the Beatles, singing a song from the musical in a subsequently memorable edition of The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1966, Ramsay recreated his role of Fagin for a West End revival of Oliver!.

Television

Returning to Australia, Ramsay's role as Charlie Cousens in Bellbird, Australia's first successful television soap opera, garnered him considerable public notice. A regular character on the show from August 1967, Ramsay left in May 1968 to take the role of Fagin in a Japanese stage production of Oliver!.

The show's producers decided to kill off his character, with Cousens falling off a wheat silo, staging what has been described as "one of the most-watched and best-remembered moments in Australian TV history",^[3] fans wrote letters protesting about his death and even sent flowers to his funeral.

He appeared in the TV movie Wicked City.

Return to stage

Ramsay returned to the theatre playing the controversial priest Daniel Berrigan in the Trial of the Catonsville Nine in Sydney. He went on to play Pontius Pilate in 's original production of Jesus Christ Superstar.^[3] He was in the first production at the opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1972: playing MacHeath in The Threepenny Opera. Ramsay spent the next few years as a leading actor with the Sydney Theatre Company, the Melbourne Theatre Company, and working in film and television. He has twice won the Melbourne Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. He was in Medea, the opening production of the Melbourne Arts Centre, playing opposite Zoe Caldwell.

In 1977, with Rodney Fisher, he developed his first solo show, drawn from the writings of Henry Lawson, The Bastard From The Bush.^[4] This refocusing on Lawson as a sophisticated short-story writer and diarist, rather than as a 'bush poet', radically altered Australia's view of their favourite icon. The play toured to Riverside Studios in London, and played extended seasons at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre and the Victorian Arts Centre. The production won the Australian Arts Award

In the early 1980s Ramsay was commissioned to create a new solo show celebrating the life and times of Rabindranath Tagore, India's Nobel Prize-winning poet: titled Borderland. The invitation came from the Indian High Commission in Canberra. The play was performed in Australia, then toured to more than 60 countries, in tandem with The Bastard from the Bush.

Ramsay then formed his own chamber theatre company, "Open Secret", and continued touring internationally, developing new productions, notably Vikram Seth's Beastly Tales from Here and There and incorporating local musicians into the company's presentations. His new solo play The Accidental Mystic, high times on the Indian ashram trail, written by his wife Barbara Bossert, opened at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre in 1995, after seasons in Sydney and the Edinburgh Festival. The play toured to London and throughout India. Ramsay was nominated for a Melbourne Critics Circle Best Actor Award for his performance.

In 1994 he toured the Tokyo International Theatre Festival with the Playbox Theatre.

Producing and directing

In 2008, he produced and directed the feature film Tao of the Traveller, a spiritual adventure film which won a Best Film Award at the South African International Film Festival in 2008, and was selected for screening at several festivals in 2009, including the British Film Festival in Los Angeles, Egypt International Film Festival, Thailand International Film Festival, and Swansea Bay International Film Festival. In 2008 the film was also invited to the Fallbrook Film Festival in California, and won awards in the Research and Experimental categories at the Accolade Film Festival.

Filmography

Films

Television

Theatre