Since the 1970s, he has appeared frequently with Judi Dench and also with her husband Michael Williams. The third time he played opposite Dench was in Peter Shaffer's play "The Gift of the Gorgon", in 1992, in which they appeared as a married couple. His other West End work in the 1990s included Archie Rice in "The Entertainer", Claudius and the Ghost in "Hamlet", Major Arnold in "Taking Sides" (Ronald Harwood), Oscar Wilde in "Gross Indecency", Sir John Brute in Farquhar's"The Provok’d Wife", Henry Trebell in Harley Granville Barker's "Waste", Trigorin in "The Seagull", and the title role in Molière's "The Misanthrope". In the first Harold Pinter Festival in Dublin he played in Pinter’s "Old Times" and "One for the Road". In 1998, he worked with Sir Peter Hall and other actors to run a workshop at the National Theatre Studio, which received considerable plaudits.