Marianne Elliott

Marianne Phoebe Elliott (born 27 December 1966) is a British theatre director and producer who works on the West End and Broadway.

She has received numerous accolades including two Laurence Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards.

Elliott was born in 1966 in London, the daughter of Michael Elliott, theatre director and co-founder of the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester, and actress Rosalind Knight.

Her maternal grandfather was the actor Esmond Knight.

The family moved to Manchester when she was eight years old and attended St Hilary's School, Alderley Edge, Didsbury Road Junior School in Heaton Moor and later Stockport Grammar School.

She has said she "hated" the theatrical professions as a child "and used to ask [her parents] not to talk shop".

Despite this early ambivalence, she studied drama at Hull University, but used "to sneak into English lectures because she found them more interesting".

Elliott's father, Michael, died when she was a teenager.

She said "I don’t think I would have gone into the theatre at all if my father had lived because he was so good at it. I didn’t make the decision to direct until I was in my late 20s, a good 10 years after he died."

After leaving university Elliott was, initially, determined not to go into the theatre and had a number of different jobs including casting director and drama secretary at Granada Television.

It was an assistant director role at Regent's Park that first moved her in the direction of a theatrical career.

In 1995 she began to work at the Royal Exchange, where her father had been a founding artistic director.

She was nurtured by Greg Hersov, who she has described as her "biggest influence", and she worked her way up including being appointed artistic director in 1998.

In her own estimation, two stand-out productions from that period were a 2000 As You Like It and the world premiere of Simon Stephens' play Port.

Initially determined not to go into theatre, Elliott began working at the Royal Exchange, Manchester eventually becoming an Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2002.

In 2002 Elliott's career saw her move from Manchester to London, when she was invited by Artistic Director Ian Rickson to become an associate director of the Royal Court Theatre.

During this time, Elliott's productions included Notes on Falling Leaves by Ayub Khan Din, The Sugar Syndrome by Lucy Prebble, Stoning Mary by Debbie Tucker Green and Local as well as many new writing workshops and play readings.

Known for her extensive work at the Royal National Theatre from 2006 to 2017, she established her own theatre production company with producer Chris Harper in 2016.

In 2006, she was invited by Nicholas Hytner, who Elliott has said "seemed to value [her] talent more highly than I did" to make her National Theatre debut with Ibsen's Pillars of the Community, which led to her being invited back to direct Saint Joan, starring Anne-Marie Duff, which won the Olivier Award for Best Revival in 2008.

She became an associate director under Hytner, and directed a series of important, influential and highly successful productions including War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

She has received critical and box-office success directing West End original productions of War Horse in 2007, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in 2012, as well as revivals of Tony Kushner's Angels in America in 2017, Stephen Sondheim's musical Company in 2018 and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in 2019, all of which transferred to Broadway.

In 2016, Elliott teamed up with theatre producer Chris Harper to set up theatre company Elliott & Harper Productions.

She left the National Theatre in 2017.

Its first production was the West End premiere of Heisenberg by Simon Stephens, directed by Elliott at the Wyndham's Theatre (3 October 2017 – 6 January 2018) which garnered mixed reviews and poor houses; an inauspicious start to the collaboration.

Elliott was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in Queen Elizabeth II's 2018 Birthday Honours for services to theatre.

Elliott & Harper became co-producers of the National Theatre's Broadway transfer of Angels in America which opened in March 2018, also directed by Elliott.

The company produced the second West End revival of Company in which Bobbie was played by a woman.

It opened at the Gielgud Theatre in September 2018 and the cast included Rosalie Craig as Bobbie, Patti LuPone as Joanne, Mel Giedroyc as Sarah and Jonathan Bailey as Jamie (originally a woman named Amy).

Elliott commented that Stephen Sondheim "didn’t like the idea at first, but he agreed to let me workshop it in London. We filmed part of it and sent it to him in New York, and he said he loved it. He has agreed to the odd lyric change, but essentially I’m hoping to tweak it as little as possible. Reviving Company 47 years on, I think it actually makes more sense for Bobbie to be a woman."

"'When I was auditioning in London, I couldn't find the person [to play Amy]. I also felt like this woman wasn't now, wasn't a very modern woman. So then I did a crazy thing — I asked a friend of mine, Jonathan Bailey... 'Would you mind just coming in and trying something for me? It's a bit crazy.' We worked for maybe an hour and a half, and it wasn't perfect, but I felt (gasp), this is exciting, there's a potential here. So I then immediately got on the email to Steve, and I said, 'Steve, you have to be sitting down. You have to be having a glass of wine in your hand. And take a deep breath, but I'm going to say something to you: I think possibly we should change Amy into a man.' And Steve's reply sums him up, really, as a collaborator. He basically said, 'Marianne, you need to be sitting down, you need to have a glass of wine in your hand, you need to take a deep breath: I think it's a great idea.''"

In 2018, Elliott's first episode of Desert Island Discs aired on BBC Radio 4, presented by Kirsty Young.

Elliott & Harper have also produced a new adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Catherine Schreiber and West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Directed by Sally Cookson, it ran at the West Yorkshire Playhouse until 27 January 2018 and transferred to the Bridge Theatre in London for Christmas 2019.

It is due to go on a UK tour in Christmas 2021.

In 2019, Elliott co-directed Death of a Salesman alongside Miranda Cromwell, which starred Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke at the Young Vic Theatre with an all-black Loman family.

In autumn 2019, the production transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre and performed to rave reviews and sold-out audiences, despite the ceiling collapse at the Piccadilly Theatre in November 2019.

In March 2020, Elliott's Olivier-award-winning production of Company opened at the Bernard Jacobs Theatre on Broadway on Stephen Sondheim's 90th Birthday Birthday.

The production was forced to close, along with the rest of Broadway, after just 12 previews as a result of the spread of COVID-19.

The revival opened December 9, 2021.

Elliott directed Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter in the new version of Talking Heads by Alan Bennett for the BBC in 2020.