Peter Hall (director)

Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE (22 November 1930 – 11 September 2017) was an English theatre, opera and film director.

His obituary in The Times declared him "the most important figure in British theatre for half a century" and on his death, a Royal National Theatre statement declared that Hall's "influence on the artistic life of Britain in the 20th century was unparalleled".

He served on the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC) committee before graduating in 1953.

In the same year, Hall staged his first professional play, The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham, at The Theatre Royal Windsor.

In 1954 and 1955, Hall was the director of the Oxford Playhouse where he directed several later prominent young actors including Ronnie Barker and Billie Whitelaw.

Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith were also part of the company as acting Assistants Stage Managers.

In 1955, Hall introduced London audiences to the work of Samuel Beckett with the UK premiere of Waiting for Godot.

From 1955 to 1957, Hall ran the Arts Theatre in London where he directed the English-language premiere of Waiting for Godot in 1955.

Hall made his debut at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1956 with Love's Labour's Lost: his productions there in the 1957–1959 seasons included Cymbeline with Peggy Ashcroft as Imogen, Coriolanus with Laurence Olivier and A Midsummer Night's Dream with Charles Laughton.

The production's success transformed his career overnight and attracted the attention, among others, of Tennessee Williams, for whom he would direct the London premieres of Camino Real (1957) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Harold Pinter.

Other productions at The Arts included the English language premiere of The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh.

Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company (1960–68) and went on to build an international reputation in theatre, opera, film and television.

In 1960, aged 29, Hall succeeded Glen Byam Shaw as director of the theatre, expanded operations to be all-year, and founded the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) to realise his vision of a resident ensemble of actors, directors and designers producing both modern and classic texts, with a distinctive house style.

The company not only played in Stratford but expanded into the Aldwych Theatre, its first London home.

Hall's many productions for the RSC included Hamlet (1965, with David Warner), The Government Inspector (1966, with Paul Scofield), the world premiere of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (1965) and The Wars of the Roses (1963) adapted with John Barton from Shakespeare's history plays.

The latter was described as "the greatest Shakespearian event in living memory which also laid down the doctrine of Shakespearian relevance to the modern world".

Hall left the RSC in 1968 after almost ten years as its director.

He was director of the National Theatre (1973–88) and artistic director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera (1984–1990).

Hall was appointed director of the National Theatre (NT) in 1973 and led the organisation for fifteen years until 1988.

He supervised the move from the Old Vic to the new purpose-built complex on London's South Bank "in the face of wide-spread scepticism and violent union unrest, turning a potential catastrophe into the great success story it remains today."

Frustrated by construction delays, Hall decided to move the company into the still-unfinished building and to open it theatre by theatre as each neared completion.

Extracts from his production of Tamburlaine the Great with Albert Finney were performed out on the terraces, free to passers-by.

Hall directed thirty-three productions for the NT including the world premieres of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land (1975, with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) and Betrayal (1978), Peter Shaffer's Amadeus (1979, with Paul Scofield and Simon Callow), and the London and Broadway premieres of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce.

Other landmark productions included The Oresteia (in a version by Tony Harrison with music by Harrison Birtwistle, 1981) which became the first Greek play to be performed by a foreign company at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, Animal Farm (in his own adaptation, 1984) and Antony and Cleopatra with Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins (1987).

Upon leaving the NT in 1988, Hall launched his own commercial company with productions in the West End and on Broadway of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending (with Vanessa Redgrave) and The Merchant of Venice (with Dustin Hoffman).

The Peter Hall Company went on to stage more than sixty plays in association with a number of producing partners including Bill Kenwright and Thelma Holt.

The plays produced included Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1992), Pam Gems' Piaf (with Elaine Paige, 1993), Hamlet (with Stephen Dillane, 1994), Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder (with Alan Bates, 1995), A Streetcar Named Desire (with Jessica Lange, 1996), Julian Barry's Lenny (with Eddie Izzard, 1999), As You Like It (with Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens, 2003), Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway? (with Kim Cattrall, 2005), the fiftieth anniversary production of Waiting for Godot, Coward's Hay Fever (with Judi Dench, 2006) and Shaw's Pygmalion (with Tim Pigott-Smith and Michelle Dockery, 2007).

Hall directed extensively in the United States including the world premiere of John Guare's Four Baboons Adoring the Sun (Lincoln Center, 1992), three Shakespeare plays with Center Theater Group, Los Angeles (1999 and 2001) and John Barton's nine-hour epic Tantalus (2000), an RSC co-production with the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to an ensemble repertory season at the Old Vic (1997), the company enjoyed a long collaboration with the Theatre Royal, Bath where a series of summer festivals were staged from 2003–2011: many productions were subsequently performed on domestic and international tours and in the West End.

He formed the Peter Hall Company (1998–2011) and became founding director of the Rose Theatre Kingston in 2003.

Throughout his career, he was a tenacious champion of public funding for the arts.

Peter Reginald Frederick Hall was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the only son of Grace Florence (née Pamment) and Reginald Edward Arthur Hall.

His father was a stationmaster and the family lived for some time at Shelford railway station.

He won a scholarship to The Perse School in Cambridge.

Before taking up a further scholarship to read English at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, Hall did his National Service in Germany at the RAF Headquarters for Education in Bückeburg.

Whilst studying at Cambridge he produced and acted in a number of plays, directing five in his final year and a further three for The Marlowe Society Summer Festival.

Hall returned to the NT for the last time in 2011 with a production of Twelfth Night mounted by the company to celebrate his eightieth birthday.

His daughter, Rebecca Hall, played Viola alongside Simon Callow as Sir Toby Belch in the Cottesloe Theatre.

Hall's final productions for his company were Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2 (2011), staged at the Theatre Royal Bath.

In 2018, the Laurence Olivier Awards, recognizing achievements in London theatre, changed the award for Best Director to the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.