Alan Rickman: a master of theatre who looked back in languor
Rickman, who came to the fore in the RSC's 1980s golden period, was an actor blessed with a voice that could caress language with laidback seductivenessFor all his later fame as the creepy Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies, Alan Rickman was very much a man of the theatre. As an actor, he had a matchless gift for ironic melancholy that made him not only the first but also the definitive Valmont in Christopher H…