A notable exponent of Restoration drama, musical comedy, satirical revue, Victorian music-hall and pantomime, he played with a dry sense of comedy and sardonic poise to which he sometimes added an amusing epicene flourish.
He also became a familiar voice in BBC radio dramas, having appeared in Mrs Dale’s Diary in 1950, and starred as Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective in 27 episodes of the Poirot series on Radio 4.
One of his most memorable stage roles was as a quietly henpecked husband in Ben Travers’s last West End play, The Bed Before Yesterday (Lyric, 1975), in which he made a touching theatrical virtue of both ruefulness and inadequacy.
The most meticulous of pantomime dames — Dame Trott was a particular forte — he wrote five pantos himself, and spent two years at Oxford Rep, where he and the young Tony Hancock played Ugly Sisters together. He was also a skilful interpreter of the cabaret songs and stage sketches of Noël Coward.
The son of Royal servants to Queen Alexandra at Marlborough House, Albert John Moffatt was born at Daventry on September 24 1922 and educated at East Sheen county school. He worked in a bank for three years before attending John Burrell’s evening drama classes at Toynbee Hall without telling his parents, who considered the stage too precarious a living.
His professional debut at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1944 was as the Raven in a touring children’s production of The Snow Queen. He went on to play more than 200 parts in provincial repertory, making his first London appearance as Loyale in Molière’s Tartuffe (Lyric, Hammersmith) in 1950. At the same venue he was the sinister waiter in Anouilh’s Point Of Departure which transferred to the Duke Of York’s.
In Peter Brook’s acclaimed revival for John Gielgud of The Winter’s Tale (Phoenix, 1951), Moffatt was noticed for his “great éclat”. After Shaw’s The Apple Cart (Haymarket) and Christopher Fry’s The Dark Is Light Enough (Aldwych), his doctor in JB Priestley’s Mr Kettle and Mrs Moon (Duchess, 1955) was judged “masterly in the self-assurance of scientific youth and in the pattering of his psycho-therapeutic jargon” by The Daily Telegraph critic.
With the newly-established English Stage Company at the Royal Court, he appeared in Nigel Dennis’s Cards Of Identity, Brecht’s The Good Woman Of Setzuan and as a frisky Mr Sparkish in Wycherley’s The Country Wife, which transferred to the West End and Broadway.
A spell with the Old Vic company in As You Like It, Richard II, Saint Joan, The Merry Wives Of Windsor and Barrie’s What Every Woman Knows brought Moffatt a leading part as Algernon in Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest on a tour of Britain, Poland and Russia.
In 1961 he won the Clarence Derwent award as best supporting actor of the season as Cardinal Cajetan in John Osborne’s Luther (Royal Court and Phoenix), a role he reprised on Broadway. In the mid-1960s he tried his hand, as actor and director, at Victorian music-hall at Hampstead Theatre Club.
Joining Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company at the Old Vic in 1969 as Fainall in Congreve’s The Way Of The World, he also played Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler with Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Moffatt went on to star in Cowardy Custard (Mermaid, 1972), a revue drawn from the work of Noël Coward, in which he sang, danced and narrated. In 1977 he toured the Far East in another Coward revue, Oh Coward!
His film credits included A Night To Remember (1958), SOS Titanic (1979) and Prick Up Your Ears (1987).
He was unmarried. A sister survives him.
John Moffatt, born September 24 1922, died September 10 2012
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