My great friend Steven Alvey, who has died of cancer aged 53, enjoyed a successful acting career on stage and television for more than 30 years. His most extraordinary performance was in the inaugural production at the new Shakespeare's Globe theatre, The Two Gentleman of Verona, in London in 1996. He had been contracted to play small parts and as an assistant stage manager. He had a regular part in a sitcom coming up in the autumn, and a summer spent mooching around on the banks of the Thames sounded like fun.
Then fate intervened. The actor playing Sir Thurio broke his leg 24 hours before the first night. Steve learned the part in less than a day and went on in the role, with no real rehearsal. The entire cast applauded him as he came on stage at the curtain call.
He took the part for the subsequent run at the Globe and in New York. Four years later, he took another part at the Globe at very short notice, this time as Trinculo in The Tempest. His most recent stage credit was in Nicholas Nickleby, at Chichester Festival theatre in 2006, as Young Wackford.
Steven was born and raised in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where he attended Greenhead grammar school. In the late 1970s, as a teenager, he moved to London and toiled happily backstage and front of house at West End theatres, before winning a place on the acting course at the Guildhall school of music and drama.
He appeared in Blood Brothers, in its first national tour, and in many productions for Hull Truck theatre, playing Tony in Up 'n' Under in the West End. In 1990, while starring in Alan Plater's Sweet Sorrow, which toured the UK and went to Los Angeles, Steve met the love of his life, the actor Amanda Orton, whom he married in 2007. On TV, Steve appeared in the sitcoms Loved By You, Beast, How Do You Want Me? and Hardware, and the dramas The Brief and North Square.
He is survived by Amanda, his sister, Janet, and his brothers, Chris and Mick.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/may/03/steven-alvey-obituary
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