Cast
Sam Dastor as The Kumranistan Ambassador
Over forty years Sam Dastor’s career has spanned theatre, film, television and radio.
He studied English at Cambridge University alongside ‘Yes Prime Minister’s writer, Jonathan Lynn, before winning a scholarship to RADA. Soon after finishing his training he joined the National Theatre, then under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier. He made his London West End debut in ‘The Tempest’ playing Ariel to Paul Scofield’s Prospero in what became the longest run of any Shakespeare play in London’s West End in the 20th Century.
His other London appearances include the world premiere of three of Simon Gray’s plays, ‘Melon’ with Sir Alan Bates, ‘Hidden Laughter’ with Felicity Kendal and ‘Cell Mates’ with Stephen Fry and Rik Mayall. For the Royal Shakespeare Company he has appeared in ‘Timon Of Athens’ and ‘Tales from Ovid’ and on a world tour of ‘The Servent of Two Masters’ which included a month at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC.
On Television he has been seen in I,Claudius, Julius Ceasear, Comedy of ERRORS, The Borgias, Space 1999, Blacke’s 7, Yes Minister, Mountbatten, The Last Viceroy and Fortunes of War with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. In 2002 he played St. Paul in a documentary drama about the Saint’s life for the BBC and the Discovery Channel. His most recent TV appearance was in the BBC series Spooks.
His films included ‘Such A Long Journey’, ‘Jinnah’ and most recently ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.’
One radio he has made innumerable broadcasts for Radio 3, Radio 4 and the BBC World Service including playing with Sir John Gielgud in ‘Forty Years On’ and Ariel to his Prospero.
Sam has also recorded many audiobooks, some of which have won Audiofile Awards in the USA.
His one-man show of Shakespeare’s Sonnets has been seen at several universities in the USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Spain as well as Westminster Abbey and the Rose Theatre in London and Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.
