Peter Hall

One of  several essays that appeared after Peter Hall's recent death, written by younger theatre artists he mentored, ended with traditional words: We shall not see his like again.

Traditional, even cliched, and yet they are not only true in his case, it's hard to think of anyone in theatre since Laurence Olivier of whom these words so clearly apply. And equally hard to think of anyone now alive to whom they could apply, at least in the same way.

But his institutional and artistic achievements in theatre resonate far beyond the theatre world.  (And not just because he also was a creative force in film and opera.)

As a very young director who ran a small London theatre, he introduced Samuel Beckett to the English speaking world with his production of Waiting for Godot in 1955.  In the same period he was the first to stage plays by Harold Pinter, ultimately directing around 10 of them.

The influence of these two playwrights alone on theatre and film, all the arts and permeating into how we speak and think today is profound.  This alone (along with championing America's Tennessee Williams when his home country was done with him) would have made him a significant contributor to theatre and cultural history.

At the same time as he broke new ground with living playwrights, Peter Hall directed innovative productions of Shakespeare featuring some of England's great stage stars.  He then founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 before he was 30.

His achievements there were even greater, because he changed the way Shakespeare was performed, and contributed a great deal to expanding the audience and the understanding of Shakespeare.

  Without a lot of gimmicks, he made the plays more accessible, and the popularity as well as prestige of the RSC made Shakespeare a popular playwright again.

 Together with John Barton (whose "Playing Shakespeare" series lives on YouTube) he found in Shakespeare's verse the directions for speaking it, and for playing the part.  This had the effect, he insisted, of making the verse more intelligible, more natural, and so audiences understood and could enjoy more.

Today we are used to Shakespeare again being part of a common experience, and also of personal revelation.  For example, shortly before leaving office President Obama told New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani that Shakespeare is “foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings.”

Many people contributed to a Shakespeare revival in the 1950s and onward, but Peter Hall and the RSC (which left a legacy of every play recorded on DVD etc.) were instrumental.

Peter Hall insisted that the director's job was to reveal the play on its own terms, not impose concepts or see the plays as opportunities for the director's self-expression. He insisted on specifics and favored collaboration with the cast, even to the extent of involving the cast in set and costume design as well as the blocking of the play.

But he moved on to an even greater institutional accomplishment, when he led the UK's fledgling National Theatre into prominence in the 70s and 80s,  taking it from a small company doing a half dozen plays a year at the Old Vic, to its huge new building with more than 100 actors and 500 staff producing 18 to 20 plays a year. In the process, the National overcame general opposition by becoming popular with the public.  Again, Shakespeare was integral to his achievement there.

Today, despite government cutbacks, the National is as thoroughly a British institution as, well, the Royal Shakespeare Company. They are such pillars of English life and what England means to the world that by now it seems that both must have always existed.

Peter Hall made his mark on American theatre as well, as evidenced by this essay and his New York Times obit.  May he rest in peace, for his legacy lives on.