Creative Team

Richard Eyre
Director

Richard Eyre worked for ten years in regional theatre in Leicester, Edinburgh and Nottingham (where he commissioned and directed Trevor Griffith's Comedians, which later transferred to London and Broadway). In London his work includes his adaptations of Jennifer Dawson's novel The Ha Ha, Sartre's Les Mains Sales and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Also Hamlet (with Jonathan Pryce), David Mamet's Edmond and The Shawl, Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick. He became director of the National Theatre in 1988, directing 27 productions including: Guys and Dolls (Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Best Director), The Beggar's Opera, Futurists (Time Out Award), Hamlet (with Daniel Day-Lewis), The Voysey Inheritance, Richard III (with Ian McKellen), Christopher Hampton's White Chameleon (with Tom Wilkinson), Eduardo de Fillippo's Napoli Milionaria and La Grande Magia, Tennessee Williams's The Night of the Iguana (with Eileen Atkins) and Sweet Bird of Youth, John Gabriel Borkman (with Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins; Critics' Circle Award), King Lear (with Ian Holm; also for BBC TV and WGBH; Evening Standard Award, Olivier Award, Critics' Circle Award, Peabody Award), Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love (with John Wood, Evening Standard Award), Nicholas Wright's Vincent in Brixton (with Clare Higgins), David Hare's Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War (also for BBC TV), Skylight (with Michael Gambon), Amy's View (with Judi Dench) and The Judas Kiss (with Liam Neeson). Also with Liam Neeson, Arthur Miller's The Crucible on Broadway. He has also produced over a hundred productions, many of which transferred to New York - including Carousel at the Lincoln Center. He has also won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement, a Lifetime, Achievement Award from the Critics' Circle and from the Directors' Guild of Great Britain, and was knighted in 1997. He has directed La Traviata at Covent Garden (conducted by Georg Solti) and Le Nozze di Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. He has written a memoir, Utopia and Other Places, and (with Nicholas Wright) Changing Stages, which was the basis of his TV series for the BBC and PBS about the history of 20th-century theatre. In 2003 he published National Service, a diary of his time at the National Theatre. He has directed many award-winning films for TV (including Tumbledown) and four feature films - The Ploughman's Lunch (Evening Standard Best Film Award), the Oscar-nominated Iris (which he co-wrote), Stage Beauty and Notes on a Scandal (with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett) which will be released in late 2006.

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