In 1980, Michael received an OBIE Award for outstanding achievement in Off-Broadway theatre for Hess  in New York.

In 1983, Hess won both The Edmonton Journal Best Actor Award & The Edmonton Journal Best Show Award at the Edmonton Theatre Festival in Canada.
 
In 1986, Hess played in Ottawa Canada: Michael was the first actor to appear solo at Canada’s National in Ottawa, and won the Capital Critics’ Citation for Best Actor. 
 
The television film version (with a screenplay by Michael Burrell, directed by Mark Chapman & made by Tiger Aspect) won a Bronze Award at the New York Film Festival in 1986.  

The film was nominated for two ACE Awards for Best Actor in a Single TV Play & for Best Single TV Play in Los Angeles in 1988.

THE GENIUS OF CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Times Literary Supplement

The Baptist In Bloom Again
The title is daring - a clear nod to Jonathan Bate's book The Genius of Shakespeare and an attempt to revise Marlowe's position as John the Baptist to Shakespeare's Jesus. Yet the intrusive explanatory "Christopher" somehow undoes the boldness of the claim: as Robert Pennant Jones's programme note concedes, "Marlowe's reputation as a playwright is not as high as it might be".

The 35 minute film should remedy the problem. A star-studded cast (all of whom have given their services free) introduce Marlovian high-points: Michael Burrell's proudly cowardly Mycetes (holding a three-tiered crown as ornate as a wedding cake); Antony Sher's Pirates-of-the-Caribbean Tamburlaine, insouciantly savouring Marlowe's verse; Joseph Fiennes sympathetically ruminative

sugar daddies
Bucks Free Press

Written by Alan Ayckbourn and directed by Robin Herford
At the Mill at Sonning: reviewed by Sandra Carter in January 2008

Country mouse Sasha, up in London to study catering, brings in off the streets a Father Christmas who has been knocked over by a hit-and-run car. The kindly 70-plus-year-old introduces himself as Uncle Val and they get chatting. But is he all he seems? Or might he be a Godfather-style criminal in disguise? He showers unsophisticated little Sasha with flowers, designer clothes, opera trips, even a make-over of her flat (though why does it look like a bordello?).

Then another old guy appears on the scene: Ashley, a retired copper from the flat below, who also falls for Sasha's innocent charm. Why does he keep warning her about Val?
In this, his 63rd play, Alan Ayckbourn leaves his customary suburban drawing room for a London flat and a seedier backdrop than usual. 'Sugar Daddies' is certainly not my favourite of his plays. Yet while not as funny as some, the plot is intriguing and, after a slow start, it does draw you into

the lives of the two old guys, Sasha and her savvy half-sister, and a middle-aged protege of Val's.
The characters are excellently cast, particularly Natalie Burt as Sasha, who masters the country accent and gradually flowering personality beautifully. Michael Burrell is equally good as Ashley, always the kindly gentleman but with hints of something more sinister. The set designs are particularly effective.

lady of letters & A woman of no importance
Winnipeg Free Press

Few people know their way around a one-person show like England's Anna Barry. In this pair of stellar one-act plays by Alan Bennett, Barry shows why she has played to packed houses in shows such as 'My Sister Next Door' and 'Whom Do I Have the Honor of Addressing?', at past festivals. In 'Lady of Letters' Barry plays Miss Ruddock, a lonely London spinster with a penchant for correspondence that ultimately lands

her in trouble. 'A Woman of No Importance' sees Barry again playing an older single woman, this time one who tells of her life at the office from her hospital room. In both cases, Barry expertly balances humor and pathos. With a pause she can say as much about a character as most actors do when provided with pages of dialogue.

Barry is a treat to behold. Of the two plays, 'Lady of Letters' is the better, but only because it holds a few more surprises. Michael Burrell's excellent direction seamlessly moves each play from bittersweet comedy to heartbreak. Fringe-goers eager to get a glimpse of Barry's newest performance would be well advised to book ahead to be sure of a seat.

funker rauch



Edmonton PM, CBC Radio

'Funker Rauch' I saw last night and one of my major criticisms of the Fringe Festival* in recent years is that there seem to be fewer and fewer real plays. You have stand-up comics, musical revues, sketch shows, jugglers, idiots who do tricks with balloons; but it's getting harder and harder to tell the indoor shows from the outdoor shows. This is one of the reasons I loved Michael Burrell's new play. It's a play. 'Funker Rauch' is what the Fringe should be all about. It's new. It's innovative. It's edifying. But, most of all, it's pure theatre. 'Funker Rauch' is not a play for the hard-of-thinking. It demands commitment from its audience, but if you're willing to invest a couple of hours and a lot of concentration, the pay-off is tremendous.

This is the harrowing story of Georg Rauch. He is now an internationally-acclaimed painter, but as a teenager he survived a living nightmare as a young soldier fighting for Hitler on the Russian front. To make it worse, he was Jewish. The play is a savage and eloquent indictment of war and racism and intolerance. All of this seen through the benevolent if somewhat myopic eyes of a painter.

Funker Rauch' – the Funker means telegraphist, as in Telefunken, I presume – takes you on a guided tour of a young man's hell. It's powerful, it's passionate, it's unrelenting, but most of all, it reeks of honesty. It's not as cloying as a a lot of pro-Jewish plays I've seen.  It tells its story without gratuitous imagery

or pretension. The cast, Michael Burrell, Robert Winslow and Elizabeth McLaughlin submit impeccable performances. Burrell is especially worthy of praise because if there's a better performance at the Fringe this year I'll bet you it's by a drop-in politician. And Paisley's direction, I think, was wonderful. He should be proud of his participation in this.

Well, Michael Burrell some would say put the Fringe on the map, really gave it lustre. It was 'Hess' in a long gone-by Festival which established the Fringe as not only a showcase for tap-dancers, stand-up comics and sketch comedy, but for serious, serious work. I think we can say, he's done it again.

borrowing time







Time Out

The first in a season of three new Michael Burrell plays is full of charm, wit and 'home truths'. The writer/actor joins the experienced and very versatile Sheila Reid to perform six roles in four episodes set non-chronologically in three different decades in the twentieth century. Together, they don't just borrow our time, they distend it, invert it, take liberties with it and make us sorry when it comes to an end. With little make-

up, but a triumphant combination of clever acting,  smart writing and well-observed costuming, they contrive to have us believe in them as youngish '50s marrieds, a modern middle-aged daughter and ga-ga geriatric, and a pair of WW1 juveniles. What plot exists is of relatively little importance: the fact that all the characters are members of one extended family is merely a dramatic device to give coherence to a script

full of eloquent observations about 'love, death, marriage and the certainties of youth'. Philip Grout directs a wonderful play that has moments of both irresistible pleasure and pain. We reported in last week's issue that since winning an Obie Award for 'Hess' in 1980, Burrell has been considered something of a one-hit-wonder. 'Borrowing Time' should scotch that for good. An utterly uplifting evening.

Hess







The New York Post

A singular theater event called Hess began Off-Off-Broadway and has since transferred to the Marquee Theatre. The Marquee is a small, airless box of a room above the Entermedia Theater on Second Avenue, of which it is an adjunct. But don't let that put you off. If you can't breathe, the show will do it for you.
In a way, the claustrophobic setting is perfect for Michael Burrell's one-man play about Rudolf Hess, at one-time Hitler's heir-apparent and now, at 84, the world's “most expensive prisoner”. In Burrell's ingenious script and brilliant characterization, Hess is many things, all provocative: a memoir of a madman, a study of political fanaticism, a treatise on justice, a portrait of old age, an analysis of penal confinement, a descent into Hell.

The play's conceit is that the infamous Hess has been granted two hours of freedom from Spandau Prison,where he has outlived his fellow war criminals (excluding the octogenarians who are still whooping it up in Argentina) and some of his 140 guards. Shambling with age and the pain of a perforated ulcer, he croaks out all his thoughts and feelings pent up in almost 40 years of solitary confinement. He cackles with remembered joy in reliving his daredevil flight from Germany and the the parachute jump that landed him in Scotland. He discomforts us with the perverted political logic of the Third Reich and hectors us with the terrible reality of our punishment. (“We never took anyone's life so slowly as you have taken mine”, he nails us, in the play's most devastating moment.)

He even cracks eggshell jokes over our stunned skulls (“Hitler wrote all of Mein Kampf – including the chapters I wrote.”
Burrell's masterful characterization has us agonizing for the frailty of the man's bones and the desolation in his eyes. The portrait is hardly sentimental. Those eyes snap with the cruelty of the fanatic, the arrogance of the unrepentant proponent of “Lebensraum” for the “Master Race”. But often, their lively glare is simply the entirely human pain of isolation, the bitter loneliness of an old man who has been forbidden to touch another human being for 40 years.
Like an old mongoose, Burrell's Hess has an evil snap or two left. But unlike such beasts, his humanity has caught up with him after all these years.

London Evening News
Irish Times
Daily Telegraph
New York Times

the merchant of Venice

Michael Burrell is enjoying a distinguished run at the Redgrave and his Shylock lives up to all expectations. He endearingly emphasises his character's wit as well as his strangeness, and in the early scenes the pound of flesh is indeed “a merry

sport”, a desperate attempt on Shylock's part to make peace with the men who despise him. It is only after his daughter has run away with a Christian that he turns into an

embittered Old Testament figure of avenging wrath, and his broken-spirited defeat in the trial scene is moving and refreshingly unsentimental.

Hamlet
The Times

Happily, Michael Burrell is permitted to make a rich study of his Welsh gravedigger, complacent with logic; and his Polonius, carefully attending to state papers in the Reynaldo scene, is a positive representative of that state which Hamlet believes to  

be rotten. He points his advice to Christopher Neame's fiery Laertes so that one knows he once lent money and was betrayed; similar human insights inform his circumlocutions which grow not so much from failing powers as from

embarassment at having forced his daughter to drive Hamlet mad. It is splendid to see Mr Burrell's powers. RSC, National and Royal Court take note.

hadrian vii

The Glasgow Herald

A Brilliant Solo in HADRIAN VII
This is a very fine piece of work indeed, which everyone should take, or make the chance to see. It is of course primarily a solo performance, and a brilliant one. Out of the character and writing of that very queer fish, Frederick William Rolfe, Peter Luke has constructed with great skill a play which presents both the actual life of the lonely and debt-ridden literary adventurer blending without break into the dreams of glory and triumph over his enemies which he puts into his greatest novel: himself, naturally, absolutely at the centre all the time.
Of this exacting part Michael Burrell takes command from the first moment when we see Rolfe sitting in his cold and shabby Edwardian bed-sitting room, hunched on his chair and scribbling away like a venomous spider; shrinking from the importunaties of his landlady but fighting back with superb malice – a “business gentleman” has called and Rolfe, self-created aristocrat and patrician, asks with withering disdain - “Is there such a thing?”
Journey to Rome
We see him step – and it is no more than a step, an almost imperceptible change most subtly suggested – into his dreams, and their increasingly magniloquent unfolding; the long-denied priesthood first, and those who denied it humbled before him, the journey to Rome, the first appearance in his shabby 

canonicals – an agile and ironic blackbird, a Baron Corvo indeed, hopping about St Peter's – and then the great climactic moment when, the College of Cardinals being at an impasse, they come in all their scarlet glory to offer him the Keys of St Peter. Will he be the new Pope? Will he not! It is a beautiful instant as, like a child, he almost jumps, almost claps his hands for joy and makes with quite unconventional rapture the conventional response “Oh, volo!” All this Mr Burrell presents with the greatest possible intelligence, wit, and – not least important – feeling.
His Rolfe is not simply a figure of absurdity – ridiculous himself and with a deadly line in ridiculing others – but also, we see, of anguish: “Oh God,” he prays in the midst of his fantasies, “why did you make me so strange?”; we hear not only the irony but also the infinite pathos of his petition (isn't it that of all of us?) “Tell me what I must do – and make me do it.”

English Pontiff
Most remarkably, perhaps, Mr Burrell makes Rolfe's Pope – Hadrian VII himself, the first English pontiff since the twelfth century – an entirely convincing figure personally if not ecclesiastically; and even in the latter terms we almost begin to believe that such a Pope, feeling within himself what he thought beyond him, the first stirring of human love, might thus have anticipated some of the revolutionary effects of

John XXIII. Enough, at any rate, to render the catastrophe shocking; though here again – martyrdom sliding into caricature – balance is beautifully held between suggestion of a possible tragic reality and a megalomaniac apotheosis which parodies itself.
Michael Burrell's superb performance necessarily dominates the Lyceum production, but by no mean eclipses much excellent acting in the framework; Arthur Cox and Donald Layne-Smith turning from bailiffs to bishops and back again, Jean Taylor-Smith as one of Rolfe's very few friends, Maureen Pryor and Joseph Brady (with some shrewd glances in the present direction of Ulster) as chief among his host of real or imagined enemies; Bill Henderson, David Blake-Kelly, Peter Wyatt, Paul Brooke, Denis Thorne, Philip Guard among the variously exalted and gloriously distinguished ecclesiastics.
Sumptuousness
The gorgeousness of the setting and costume – Princes of the Church in great splashes of scarlet, Vatican sumptuousness richly suggested – is an important part of the production, both in the sensual pleasures offered and in its moral scheme.
Without stating it Rolfe's fundamentally aesthetic attitude to religion is shown; and at the same time, exactly setting the tone, its expression adds to the comic, ironic, pathetic reflection upon it a pure indulgence to the eye. As indulgences go it is marvellous value.

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