Peter Hall

Peter Hall (1930- ), leading English stage director and theatre manager and, as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the National Theatre, one of the most influential figures in post-war British theatre.

Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall was born on November 22, 1930, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the son of a railway clerk. He won scholarships to the Perse School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1953. Peter Hall achieved early recognition as director of the first British production of Waiting for Godot by Beckett in 1955 at the Arts Theatre, London. From 1956 he worked at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on a string of notable productions, including A Midsummer Night's Dream with Charles Laughton and Cymbeline with Laurence Olivier. In 1960 he founded the Royal Shakespeare Company. During the next eight years as managing director Peter Hall established the RSC as one of the world's leading theatre ensembles, with a distinct company style and a reputation for excellence in all aspects of Shakespearean performance.

From 1973 to 1988 Hall was director of the National Theatre, managing its move from the Old Vic Theatre to its new permanent home on the South Bank. To open the National's Olivier auditorium, he directed Albert Finney in Hamlet and in Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great (both 1973). He also directed the world premiere of the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus, with Paul Scofield as Salieri (1979), and explored Greek drama and mask theatre in a memorable all-male production of The Oresteia by Aeschylus.

After leaving the National Theatre, Peter Hall continued to pursue a busy career as a director of opera and theatre, serving as artistic director of Glyndebourne (1984-1990), and with his own Peter Hall Company performing regularly in the commercial West End and internationally. His 1992 production of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde was revived at the Haymarket in 1996, before transferring to Broadway, and the Peter Hall Company held residencies at the Old Vic in 1997, where Hall revived Waiting for Godot with Ben Kingsley and Alan Howard, and at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1998-1999, where among the highlights of the season was the Eduardo de Filippo comedy Filumena Marturano. In 2003 the company, which by then had been joined by Hall's daughter, Rebecca, began the first of many annual summer residencies at the Theatre Royal Bath. Hall also revived Amadeus, with David Suchet as Salieri, at the Old Vic (1998) and on Broadway (1999), and in 2000, Tantalus, John Barton's epic cycle of plays about the Trojan War, was finally brought to the stage by Hall and his son Edward for the RSC.

Hall won Tony Awards as Best Director for his Broadway productions of Pinter's The Homecoming (1967) and Amadeus (1980). He was made a CBE in 1963, knighted for services to British theatre in 1977, and received an Olivier Award for lifetime achievement in 1999.