Theatre Archive

Tyrone Guthrie was one of the great orginators amoung the British Theatre Directors. A true enfant terrible of the British Theatre of the thirties and forties and quite the tallest enfant terrible to be found in the English-speaking world – standing six foot four in his socks. He blazed a trail for the subsidized theatre of the Sixties. He received a degree in history at Oxford University, where he was active in student theatre, and worked for a season at the newly-established Oxford Playhouse.

His work in London before and during the Second World War included productions with John Gielgud, Orson Wells, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness. He had a profound effect on directors such as Peter Brook and Peter Hall and his views on theatre could be readily adapted to all the arts.

Guthrie started theatres all over the world. He gave the Shakespeare Festival to Canada at Stratord, Ontario; he added to the flourishing American regional theatre movement with his work at Minneapolis and perhaps his greatest achievement was to reinvent the open stage.

The range of Tyrone Guthrie’s achievement in opera and drama is formidable; ninety-six productions, not including those he did for the Scottish National Players and the Cambridge Festival Theatre between 1926 and 1930, together with several works for radio (BBC) and a handful of plays and books he wrote.

He never referred to his knighthood, which came very late in life. There was an inate humility about him and he always hoped to find a shadow of it in others.