Michael Howell BlakemoreAOOBE (18 June 1928 – 10 December 2023) was an Australian actor, writer and theatre director who also made a handful of films. A former Associate Director of the National Theatre, in 2000 he became the only individual to win Tony Awards for Best Director of a Play and Musical in the same year for Copenhagen and Kiss Me, Kate.
Biography
Early life and career
Michael Howell Blakemore was born in Sydney, the son of Conrad Howell Blakemore, an eye surgeon, and his wife, Una Mary Litchfield. He married English actress Shirley Bush. Blakemore was educated at The King's School, Sydney, and went on to study medicine at the University of Sydney but failed his examinations.
Blakemore's first job in the theatre was as a press agent for Robert Morley during the Australian tour of Edward, My Son, who advised him to try drama school. In 1950 he came to London, enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and trained as an actor until 1952. He made his first professional stage appearance in 1952 at the Theatre Royal, Huddersfield, as the doctor in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
Blakemore then worked for several years in repertory including Birmingham Repertory Company, Bristol and Coventry, and made his first London appearance at the Princes Theatre in March 1958 as Jack Poyntz in the musical play School. He also played small parts at Stratford in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre's 1959 season. It was at the latter that he met and worked with Laurence Olivier and Peter Hall.
In 1969 Blakemore joined the National Theatre at the Old Vic to direct The National Health by Peter Nichols. He later directed Laurence Olivier in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1971). In 1970, as the National Theatre began a slow, and much delayed, transition from the Old Vic premises to the multi-stage South Bank site, Blakemore was invited by Laurence Olivier to become one of two Associate Directors.[1] Since Olivier had already suffered from medical crises that were a feature of the last quarter of his life, the question of eventual succession as Artistic Director was obviously in the background. Blakemore felt he was a probable candidate, and indeed, according to Olivier's biographer Philip Ziegler, he was highly favoured.[2]
But in 1973 the Board of the National Theatre appointed Peter Hall without consulting Olivier. Blakemore wrote:
"It was a little like a putsch, and people were separated from one another by private concerns: what did the future hold and would they still keep their jobs?"[3]
Blakemore and Hall had been rivals during the 1959 season at the Royal Shakespeare Company when Hall had directed Blakemore as an actor and both had had romantic ideas about Vanessa Redgrave.[4] Blakemore became one of ten associate directors forming what was called a planning committee.[5] Blakemore and Hall's rivalry was dramatised when Blakemore presented a formal manifesto to the committee recommending reform.[6] The committee refused to discuss the manifesto and Blakemore was eventually forced to resign when his salary was stopped without warning or explanation.[7] His other productions included Tyger by Adrian Mitchell, co-directed with John Dexter (1971), The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1972), Macbeth (1972), The Cherry Orchard (translated by Ronald Hingley, 1973), Grand Manoeuvres (1974), Engaged by W. S. Gilbert (1975), and Plunder by Ben Travers (1976).
His association with playwright Michael Frayn, which began at the Lyric Hammersmith with Make and Break (1980) and Noises Off (1982), continued with Frayn's Benefactors (Vaudeville, 1984), Frayn's translation of Uncle Vanya (Vaudeville, 1988), and his original plays, Here (Donmar Warehouse, 1993) and Now You Know (Hampstead, 1995). In 1980, Blakemore was invited to direct a series of four plays at the newly reconstructed Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith) by Artistic Director Bill Thomley. The Board made it known that they were looking for a new Artistic Director, and Blakemore decided to put his name forward. However, the job went to Peter James.[8]
After an absence of many years, Blakemore returned to the National to direct Frayn's play Copenhagen in May 1998, before its transfer to the Duchess Theatre in February 1999. This was followed by Alarms and Excursions (Gielgud, September 1998), Democracy (National, Cottesloe, September 2003; Wyndham's, April 2004)[1], and Afterlife (National, Lyttelton, June 2008)[2][permanent dead link].
In 1995 he directed the off-Broadway production of Death Defying Acts, composed of three one-act plays (Central Park West by Woody Allen, The Interview by David Mamet and Hotline by Elaine May). Also Coleman's The Life (1997), the revival of Kiss Me, Kate (1999), Embers by Christopher Hampton, with Jeremy Irons at the Duke of York's Theatre in London (March 2006) [3] and, on Broadway, Deuce by Terrence McNally (April 2007) starring Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes[4]. Blakemore's production of Is He Dead?, a comic play by Mark Twain, never previously produced, opened on Broadway in November 2007 with a run of 105 performances [5]. In 2014 Blakemore directed Angela Lansbury once more, in the critically acclaimed West End production of "Blithe Spirit". His most recent production was the London premiere of 'The Life', staged at the Southwark Playhouse in 2017, starring Sharon D Clarke.
^Blakemore (2013) p.147. Neither of their passions was requited, but Hall did not renew Blakemore's contract. Tom Chester, a character in Blakemore's novel Next Season – a devious and aloof theatre director – is recognisable as Peter Hall.
^Blakemore (2013) pp.275–286. Perhaps his most insubordinate suggestion was that Peter Hall should no longer draw a full salary from the National during his frequent absences directing elsewhere (Glyndebourne, Bayreuth e.g.) All the other directors had their incomes from the National suspended while guest-directing.
