with a need to be deceived by his wife, won the Bancroft Gold Medal award in 1970 for Most Promising Actor. Wood joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1971 under Peter Hall, where he remained for several seasons. In 1971, he played Yakov Bardin in Maxim Gorky's Enemies. His 1972 performance as Brutus in Julius Caesar was his breakthrough performance. At the RSC he also played Sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege's Restoration comedy The Man of Mode, Mark in Jean Genet's The Balcony, and a narcissistic Saturninus in Titus Andronicus. After the two Roman plays, Wood was acclaimed "the most intellectually exciting actor in Britain" by Sheridan Morley. He made a "spindly, lecherous and slightly manic husband" in John Mortimer's Collaborators (Garrick, 1973) alongside Glenda Jackson. Returning to the RSC he took the title role in William Gillette's 1899 drama Sherlock Holmes. The RSC took the production to Broadway in late 1974, attracting his second Tony nomination in 1975. It was the start of a seven year period alternating between London and New York City. Before transferring to America, Wood took on the role of the diplomat Henry Carr in the 1974 premiere of Tom Stoppard's Travesties. Stoppard wrote the part of Carr specifically for Wood, meaning Trevor Nunn was able to secure Travesties for the RSC. As Carr, Wood alternated between the dual roles of a querulous geriatric and his younger snobbish self remembering his encounters with James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, and Lenin in 1917 Zurich. Wood was awarded the Evening Standard Best Actor award. Travesties transferred to Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1975, and Wood won a Tony Award in 1976 and a Drama Desk Award for his performance. At the RSC in 1976 with Tom Conti, Bob Hoskins, T.P. McKenna, and Zoë Wanamaker, he took the lead as General Bugoyne, in George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple. He also had the title role in "the ideal midlife crisis play", as Chekhov's Ivanov. In 1977, he took the role of the lunatic Ivanov, who imagines he owns an orchestra, in Tom Stoppard and André Previn's political oratorio Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, directed by Trevor Nunn at the Royal Festival Hall. In autumn 1977 he played the title role in a Broadway production of Tartuffe (translated by Richard Wilbur) at Circle in the Square Theatre. In 1978, Wood was in the