Murdoch appeared in two seasons at the Shaw Festival and on tour in North America, playing Aubrey in " Tons of Money" (1968) and William the waiter in "You Never can Tell" (1973); he toured South Africa in a comedy called "Not in the Book" (1974), and toured Britain as Sir William Boothroyd, the role created by Ralph Richardson, in William Douglas-Home's "Lloyd George Knew My Father". From 1978 to 1990 Murdoch had a long-running regular role as "Uncle Tom", the briefless senior barrister of chambers, in "Rumpole of the Bailey". In 1981 he played the headmaster in Alan Bennett's "Forty Years On". In 1989 he played Lord Caversham in Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" on tour and at the Westminster Theatre; "The Times" commented that he managed to make "Caversham's ghastly mixture of the sanctimonious, the roguish and the bluff" seem human.