Photo: David Sillitoe/The Guardian
From 1979 to 2004, Philip Hedley, who has died aged 85, was artistic director of the Theater Royal, Stratford East. This was the legendary location of the Theater Workshop company, founded by Joan Littlewood, who had retired from the site in 1975, saddened by the death of her partner and manager, Gerry Raffles. She died in 2002.
Hedley kept the flame and the theater alive, taking power in the midst of a crisis when the Arts Council threatened to withdraw their support unless he justified it within two years. He took up the challenge and organized varied evenings (hosted by actor Kate Williams), poetry readings, a farce about Margaret Thatcher and a Lindsay Anderson production of Hamlet starring Frank Grimes.
He sealed the deal with Nell Dunn's Steaming (1981), directed by Roger Smith, an allegory of his own endangered situation in the story of an endangered ladies' Turkish bath. It moved to the West End, won an Olivier Award, moved to Broadway and became a film directed by Joseph Losey. The stellar cast of Stratford East included Georgina Hale, Patti Love and Brenda Blethyn.
Now given new powers, Hedley took a deep dive into one of Britain's most racially mixed boroughs - Newham - creating work that reflected the social issues and experiences of the diverse local community. He championed black and Asian writers, directors and actors; commissioned new plays about care homes, library closures, curricula reductions in schools (particularly in the arts); and produced a string of talented names as associate and assistant directors: Indhu Rubasingham, now appointed director of the National Theatre; Clint Dyer, current NT deputy director; Michael Buffong, artistic director of Talawa theater company; the director Matthew Xia; and Kerry Michael, who succeeded him as artistic director.
Throughout his regime, Hedley, who had been both a panellist and chairman of Stratford East's board of directors before taking over as director, remained an outspoken, passionate campaigner against cuts to the Arts Council ('Always biting the hand that gives you nourishes', it said). his advice to directors and administrators) and covert forms of censorship, which saw him tirelessly present in schools and social centers in Newham.
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He was a committed advocate of pantomime as a genre, and the films produced annually at Stratford East were usually the best in the city, with original music, a live band of five or six musicians, an excellent lady in the actor Michael Bertenshaw and beautiful, colorful designs by Jenny Tiramani.
Perhaps the Theater Royal's greatest asset is its local audience: engaged in the theater and participatory with a lively, informal sense of occasion. I grew up in nearby Ilford and saw many shows there growing up. The involvement of Stratford audiences, from the days of Littlewood through to the current artistic leadership of Nadia Fall, has grown exponentially as the theater has increased its commitment to the community on its doorstep. Hedley had a deep understanding of this. The spirit of the place is magical and indelible.
Yet a second major crisis threatened at the end of the 1980s. Once again the theater was saved by a brilliant show. Five Guys Named Moe (1990), created by actor Clarke Peters, to the music and lyrics by Louis Jordan, was turned into a money-making West End hit by Cameron Mackintosh, who made a good deal for the theater, impressed by Hedley's courage to take risks.
Hedley was born in Manchester, the second son of Leonard Hedley, a police officer and later a supermarket manager, and his wife Gladys (née Addison). His mother later changed her name to Lois Gould after divorcing Leonard and marrying Leslie Gould, head of music at Paramount Films and later an executive at Philips, the record company; Philip grew up with Gould and always regarded him as his father.
He spent a year at Hutton grammar school in Preston before his mother and stepfather moved to London, where he attended the Stationers' Company school in Hornsey. Gould's work brought the family to Australia in 1951, and Philip attended Hampton High School in Melbourne before they moved to Sydney, where he studied English at the University of Sydney.
Returning to Britain in 1960, and inspired by Littlewood's work at Stratford East, Hedley enrolled in 1961 as a founding student at Margaret Bury's E15 acting school, which trained students in Littlewood's practical rehearsal methods and in the teachings of Stanislavski and Rudolf Laban's movement analysis.
After graduating, he took his first job as acting assistant director at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1963, where, he says, he was seduced by both the leading actress and the lead actress in the first week.
He returned to the E15 acting school as a teacher and producer (1964-66), went on to teach at Lamda (1966-67) and worked as a freelance director before being appointed artistic director of the Theater Royal Lincoln. There he directed more than twenty productions between 1967 and 1970, including The Marie Lloyd Story, which Littlewood had premiered at Stratford in 1967.
Before joining Littlewood as an associate, he was Artistic Director of the Midland Arts Theater Company in Birmingham for two years, where he built creative relationships with playwrights Henry Livings and David Cregan, both of whom would write for him in Stratford.
On either side of Five Guys he presented a major theatrical double from Mike Leigh: first, in 1990, an 80-minute hilarious suburban nightmare, Greek Tragedy, which was commissioned and performed by Sydney's Belvoir Street theater company; and then one of Leigh's most powerful works, It's a Great Big Shame (1993), taken from a Gus Elen music hall song, a beautiful double Stratford drama - ancient and modern - set around two separate murders at the same address in a century, starring Kathy Burke.
Other notable productions under his charge included several pieces of music by Ken Hill - including The Phantom of the Opera, before the Lloyd Webber version, in 1984, and The Invisible Man in 1991 (which transferred to the West End in 1993); the 1988 British premiere of Lorca's The Public, directed and designed by Ultz, a surreal parlor game with moments of great power and beauty; and, in the 1990s, the raucous comedy sketch shows of the Posse, a group of black male actors, and the Bibi Crew collective of black female writers and actors, which rocked the old place with laughter and disrespect.
In 2004, Dyer's production of The Big Life, a ska musical about the Windrush generation with a Shakespearean storyline (from Love's Labour's Lost), written by Paul Sirett of Stratford and the composer Paul Joseph, was one of the best new works. in that era.
Another part of his job was commissioning popular shows about the lives of famous show business icons: Josephine Baker, Fatty Arbuckle, Sammy Davis Jr. and Marilyn Monroe. These forged links with the older community on his doorstep with memories of Hollywood and variety.
Hedley never lost touch with his theater after stepping down in 2004, and last year paid a moving tribute to one of Littlewood's most important actors, Murray Melvin, at a memorial at the Teatro Technis in Camden Town, where his protégé Kerry Michael is now the director.
He was appointed CBE in 2005, received an honorary doctorate from the University of East London (2011), played the Queen in the raucous 1972 Littlewood production of British Holidaymakers in Spain (Frank Norman's Costa Packet) and occasionally entertained his friends at parties with an improvised version of the 19th century musical number The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (which soars through the air with the greatest of ease). Hedley flew, but not so easily. Keeping Stratford going was always a struggle, but he never let his heroic, ultimately rewarding efforts limit him.
* Philip David Hedley, theater director, manager and campaigner, born April 10, 1938; died January 5, 2024
