Old Ds Making Headlines
Blake Ritson, Class of 1991, was a mainstay of many dramatic productions at Dolphin, probably most notably in the role of Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream and the lead in Moliere’s Hypochondriac. He wrote a play for a competition organised by South Hill Park. He was a runner up and performed his piece there–we only then realised it was an adult’s competition! While still at Dolphin he played the juvenile lead in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia in the West End. He was still in this role when he went to St. Paul’s on an academic scholarship and while at school and Cambridge (where he studied English and Mediaeval Italian) he continued to act in the London theatre and Edinburgh Festival. as well as for Footlights. Interestingly his brother Dylan, also at Cambridge, was extremely successful writing plays both for Footlights and the Festival which received excellent reviews in the national press. Presently Blake and Dylan write and direct together and have won a number of awards. Their latest short film Love Hate (2009) went to over twenty film festivals and won the Jury Award at Palm Springs. The two brothers appeared on the front cover of Screen Internationsl's Stars of Tomorrow in 2009. Blake continues to appear in many, many West End plays and television dramatisations such as Mansfield Park (Edmund Bertram), as Mr Elton in Emma and Idek in God on Trial as well as appearing as Giles Vicary in the BBC series Red Cap and Robert Presley in A Touch of Frost. Blake has recently appeared as the poet Shelley in Peter Blake’s The Romans in London, Justin in The League of Gentlemen. and the lead in The Rope. |
