R.I.P. 2019: Jonathan Miller

Of all the people I didn't know who died in 2019, I was most saddened by the death of Jonathan Miller.  He was an important presence at various times in my life.

 When I was in college in the 1960s, one of my teachers (Douglas Wilson) mentioned this comedic satire by four young Englishmen called Beyond the Fringe. I soon acquired the album from their Broadway show, and pretty much memorized many of the bits.  In many ways it was life-changing, and certainly influenced my creative life for a long time.

The four members of Beyond the Fringe--Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Arnold Bennett and Jonathan Miller--were the Beatles of comedy.  Without Beyond the Fringe there would have been no Monty Python or Firesign Theatre, or possibly no Douglas Adams and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. 

 But this foursome was an artifical supergroup of funny guys from Oxford and Cambridge assembled by the official Edinburgh Festival to compete with its unofficial fringe festival comedies. After their Broadway success they disbanded, but while Bennett cultivated a career as a playwright, the other three stayed in the public eye throughout the 60s.  Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were the most visible, on British TV and a few Hollywood films (notably Bedazzled.) Miller was studying medicine, but kept get invitations to direct plays, TV shows and movies.

Meanwhile in my life, after intense periods in Boston and Washington I returned to western Pennsylvania in the late 70s.  I was freelancing for magazines and then working on a book, so my life consisted of short bursts of travel and long periods of relative isolation.  My intellectual stimulation came chiefly from reading, and was mostly embodied by precious moments on film and especially on television.

The Body in Question, Miller's series carried in the US on PBS stations about the history of medicine, was one of the programs of the golden age for such stimulating series that included Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, the James Burke programs, Robert Hughes' Art of the New, Ronald Harwood's theatre history All the World's A Stage, and Carl Sagan's Cosmos.  Probably the last were produced by Bill Moyers into the 1990s.  All of these were as important to my mental nourishment, sense of self, and my sanity.

Though Miller stopped formal performing, he was such an engaging talker that he was often featured on American talk shows, which were far more present and far more likely to hold some intellectual interest in the 60s into the 80s than since. In particular, he was given entire hours by Dick Cavett in the 1980s, often several strung together. His marvellous intelligence was inspiring and encouraging as well as stimulating. Miller's talk was absolute sustenance to me in those years.

 While I was aware of Miller as producer and director of several Shakespeare plays for the BBC project of filming all of them, and I'd heard him talk about at least one of them, it was years later in California when I was writing regularly about theatre that I watched tapes of these productions provided by the Humboldt University library.  It was then that I read with great interest his 1986 book Subsequent Performances, about approaching new productions of classic plays. Even more recently I caught up with his provocative 1960s television adaptation--or reimagining--of Alice in Wonderland on DVD.

directing Alice in Wonderland

In these and other ways, Jonathan Miller was a presence in my life over 5 decades, even though I didn't know him, never met him, and never saw on stage a production he directed.  Now, since his death was announced in November, I've been reading about him (including in a 1992 book, A Profile of Jonathan Miller), re-reading Subsequent Performances and watching what I could find on YouTube. There's actually quite alot: many interviews--including the 80s appearances on Cavett and several with Clive James, who died the same month as Miller--and a couple of television dramas he directed.  I've deepened my knowledge of the man and his achievements.

 He brought a fearless originality to his theatrical productions, while at the same time endearing himself to the people he worked with--particularly actors--with his humor, encouragement and respect for their own creativity.  Though he was the victim of clueless criticism, he got good notices as well.  Many of his theatre productions were hits with audiences, and several of his opera productions ran for decades.  Though I probably would not have agreed with some of his interpretations, they were dazzling in their daring and internal consistency.

directing John Cleese in BBC Taming of the Shrew

Though he brought conceptual frameworks to his productions, and coordinated designs (often selecting painters for his designers to see), he felt his contributions as a director were in details--in small moments and gestures by the actors.  His approach was informed by what his novelist mother told him was a function of fiction: to make the negligible considerable, and the forgettable memorable. The job of directing, he felt, was directing attention.

He used his experience as a doctor observing everything about a patient to collect small human gestures which he suggested to his actors.  To the madness of Lear and other characters, he brought medical knowledge of how disorder or old age are expressed in concrete behavior.

Bob Hoskins and Anthony Hopkins in
Miller's BBC-TV Othello

While his interpretations were sometimes controversial, they were always grounded in history and based on a particular logic, about about how people actually behave rather than some metaphorical conceit.

Some changed how many plays are now approached.  For example, after his working class Iago (Bob Hoskins), no production of Othello can ignore the precedent.  He made the racial components of Othello and The Merchant of Venice more realistic by softening the apparent differences, while revealing and sharpening racial divides in The Tempest--also an interpretation no subsequent production can ignore.


He enlivened classics like Hamlet and Lear and several Chekhov plays partly by emphasizing characters that are usually played as minor, such as Claudius in Hamlet. He approached opera as another kind of play, bringing new interest to audiences.

Those who worked with him often mentioned his humor, and the sense of rehearsal as play.  "For me, what is attractive about the stage is contained in the name of what it is we do," he wrote.  "It is a play and is playful."

In A Profile of Jonathan Miller, a notable number of actors and producers name Tyrone Guthrie as Miller’s closest resemblance in directorial style. In addition to his humor, they also mention his warmth with actors, inventiveness and keen eye for behavior. He began productions with a strong sense of time and place, and with a visual style selected, but collaborated closely with designers and actors to produce effects that worked for them, the audience and the show.

Miller’s work in directing opera transformed opera productions down to the present. Robert Brustein claims that Miller’s direction of Robert Lowell’s Old Glory transformed American theatre. “Alot of stage directors...know only about the theatre and not too much about anything else,” observed opera orchestra conductor Kent Nagano. “Jonathan knows about everything.”

In addition to his knowledge and intelligence, Nagano adds, “That’s what he brings into his productions—a sense of everyday life.”

  Miller directed tragedy, and in every play he looked for the irony.Whether or not it is a tragic irony, in the 1980s Miller helped found the UK's Alzheimer's Society and was an  its president for many years, using his skills and presence to bring attention to the previously obscure disease.  In 2019 he himself succumbed to it.  His mother died relatively young of early onset Alzheimer's, but Jonathan Miller, who once said he would be satisfied with living 80 years, made it to 85.

May he rest in peace.  His work lives on.