H.C. Sidney

H.C. Sidney was a British actor and comedian

He came to South Africa in 1884 with a company got together by Henry Harper,

According to Boonzaier (1923) he was Harper's leading man and superb in roles such as: "Cecil Vane" in Faces in the Fire (), "Sir Joseph Porter" in The Pinafore (Searelle and Lingard), "Pygmalion" in Pygmalion and Galat'Cecil Vane" ea (Gilbert), "Sir Simon Simple" in Not Such a Fool as He Looks (Byron), "Captain Crighton" in Impulse (Stephenson), " " in The Two Orphans (Oxenford), " Mildmay" in Still Waters Run Deep (De Bernard/Taylor), "John Stratton" in The Old Love and the New (Howard and (Albery), "Chalcot" in Ours (Robertson), "Henry Beauclerc" in Diplomacy (Sardou/Stephenson and Scott), "Job Armroyd" in Lost in London (Phillips), "Sir Horace Welby" in Forget-me-Not (Merival and Grove), and "a host of other characters he acted in a manner that stamped them indelibly on the memory" (cited in Bosman, 1980: pp. 377-8).

After Harper had given up the Theatre Royal, Sidney gave his best performance ("the apex of his colonial career" as Boonzaier phrases it) as "Wilfred Denver" in Sutton Vane's production of The Silver King (Jones and Herman) in 1885.