Richard first worked with Michael Cabot on the première of Sebastian Michael’s The Power of Love at the Southwark Playhouse in 1998, and has since worked on three productions for London Classic: The Game of Love and Chance, The Caretaker and Old Times. He trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, and has worked in all aspects of theatre, from Shakespeare (including Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Cassius in Julius Caesar, and Orlando, Audrey and Sundry Lords in As You Like It) to Pinter (see above).  He has played Victorian bigots and four-year-old girls (and both in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine), and has had several parts written for him, including in Nigel Fairs’ plays Sauna, The Darkest Room and Unsex Me Here!  He created the roles of Cleveland in the première of Fanny Burney’s A Busy Day, written in 1800, and Eugen in Sebastian Michael’s Love Trilogy.  Recently he has focussed on comedy.  He played fourteen characters in Around the World by Orson Welles and Cole Porter, part of the Lost Musicals series at Saddlers Wells, reviewed by The Times as ‘unforgettably demure’ and ‘insane but perfect’.  In Treasure Island at the King’s Head he limited himself to a mere seven... He spent most of 2008 at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, performing plays by Chekhov, Bennett, Stoppard and Shaw, and was happy to return to the LCT fold for the revivals of The Caretaker mounted to celebrate the company's 10th anniversary of touring in the summer and autumn of 2010. When not acting Richard teaches in museums: his television series Art in the National Gallery and Tate Modern are aired regularly on Channel 4, and he has written two books, The Secret Language of the Renaissance (2006) and The Secret Language of Churches and Cathedrals (2010).

richardstemp.org.uk