Michael Blakemore, the actor turned theatre director who staged plays by Michael Frayn, Peter Nichols and many others over a lengthy career, has died at the age of 95. His death on Sunday, after a short illness, was announced on Tuesday by the talent agency United Agents.
Blakemore directed acclaimed productions in the UK and the US over six decades. He was born and educated in Sydney, married the English actor Shirley Bush and arrived in London to train as an actor at Rada, where he graduated in 1952. He performed in rep around the UK but after a dozen years or so decided to concentrate on directing and staged work at the Citizens theatre in Glasgow where he had also been an actor.
It was at the Citizens, where he became co-artistic director, that Blakemore staged A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1967. The play, a black comedy about a couple caring for their disabled daughter, had been sent on spec by an unknown playwright, Peter Nichols. After its run in Glasgow, it went to the West End and then Broadway, where Nichols was nominated for a Tony award (his first of seven nominations) in 1968.
The following year he directed another Nichols play, The National Health, at the National Theatre. He joined the organisation as an associate director in 1971 and spent five years there, working first under Laurence Olivier (whom he directed in Long Day’s Journey Into Night) and then under Peter Hall with whom he fell out. In his memoir Stage Blood, winner of the 2014 Sheridan Morley prize for theatre biography, Blakemore recalled: “My time there, though it would provide enormous rewards, ended by becoming the most distressing of my career.”
Blakemore was celebrated for his frequent collaborations with the playwright Michael Frayn, directing Make and Break (1980), Noises Off (1982) and Copenhagen (1998). In 2000, he became a double Tony award winner for best director, recognised in separate categories for Copenhagen and the musical Kiss Me Kate. His other musicals included City of Angels and The Life, both of which he staged on Broadway and in London. He directed Angela Lansbury in Noël Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit on Broadway in 2009 and again in London’s West End in 2014.
He is survived by his second wife, Tanya McCallin, from whom he was separated, and by three children, Conrad, Beatie and Clemmie, and three grandchildren.
