Obituary: Colin George

Colin George’s decision to champion a thrust stage in Sheffield’s new Crucible Theatre in 1971 was one of the most controversial theatre issues of the day. Eyebrows and voices were raised against the notion, with George taking to the pages of The Stage to defend his choice and explain the advantages it offered.

Built at a cost of £1 million, the 1,000-seat Crucible was, George claimed, “a theatre in which actor and audience will meet without inhibition”. It revitalised theatre in the city (doubling the old Sheffield Playhouse’s audiences), boosted the profile of regional theatre and became a mainstay of TV sports broadcasting as home to the world snooker finals.

George became involved in theatre while reading English at Oxford University. In 1952 he formed the Elizabethan Theatre Company with fellow graduates Peter Hall, Toby Robertson and John Barton. He took the titular role as Henry V in its first production (Westminster Theatre, 1953) and was also seen as Cassius (Julius Caesar) and Orsino in a Twelfth Night directed by Hall the following year.

Throughout his career, George was to balance directing, managing and acting.

After a spell with Frank Dunlop’s Midland Theatre Company, he spent two years with Birmingham Rep (for whom he played the male lead in Peter Ustinov’s Romanoff and Juliet in 1957) before joining Nottingham Rep to play an “extravagant at times but fresh and appealing” Hamlet in 1959.

As the company’s associate director, he staged the first regional production of Arnold Wesker’s Roots (1960) and directed Alastair Sim as Shylock (The Merchant of Venice, 1964) and John Neville (the theatre’s then artistic director) as Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (1965).

The same year, he succeeded Geoffrey Ost at the Sheffield Playhouse and set about transforming its repertoire with an emphasis on contemporary plays and community work. He was also an early advocate for children’s theatre.

He scored a local hit with The Stirrings in Sheffield on Saturday Night (1967, revived in 1973) but refused a West End transfer, insisting instead on regional parity with the capital.

His first production in the newly opened Crucible was a Peer Gynt that confounded critics of its thrust stage, which, The Stage noted, “is used with great imagination and insight, swarming with life and vivid inventiveness”.

George left the Crucible (now one of three venues operated by Sheffield Theatres) in 1974, his swansong the UK’s first professional staging of Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster’s Western musical Calamity Jane with Lynda Marchal (later to find fame as the writer Lynda La Plante) as the titular cowgirl.

In 1976, he became artistic director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia in Adelaide, where he directed Hamlet (1979) and played Vershinin in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters in his final season in 1980.

Returning to the UK, he was seen as Jerry in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at the Leicester Haymarket in 1980, succeeding Robin Midgley as its artistic director the same year.

There, his directorial credits ranged from an unedited, four-hour-long Hamlet (with Malcolm Sinclair in the lead) to the premiere of Anthony Minghella’s Whale Music, in 1981.

Leaving Leicester after a year, he led the Western Australian Theatre Company in Perth and was head of acting at Hong Kong’s Academy for Performing Arts for 11 years.

In 1995, he wrote and performed a one-man show, My Son – Will (a portrait of Shakespeare from his father’s perspective), and played the Prince of Arragon in Gregory Doran’s 1998 production of The Merchant of Venice for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

At Birmingham Rep, he appeared in a production of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van in 2001. He took his leave of acting a decade later as Brabantio in Othello, fittingly enough in the Crucible’s 40th-anniversary staging of the play.

Colin George was born on September 20, 1929 and died on October 15, aged 87. He is survived by his second wife and four children from his first marriage.