R.I.P. Michael Blakemore

[Reza]

Michael Blakemore, Record-Holding, Two-Time Tony-Winning Director, Dies at 95

Blakemore is the only director to win a pair of Tony Awards for staging a Play and Musical in a single year.

by David Gordon (Theatermania) 12/13/2023

Two-time Tony Award-winning director Michael Blakemore has died at the age of 95.

Born in Sydney in 1928, Blakemore moved to England in 1950 to train as an actor at RADA. He made his directorial debut in 1966 at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, where he worked as Artistic Director, and came to worldwide prominence in 1967 when he directed the Peter Nichols drama A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, for which he received a Tony nomination in 1968. He served as an associate director under Laurence Olivier at the newly formed National Theatre, where he staged productions of The Front Page, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and The National Health.

In 1980, Blakemore began a longtime partnership with playwright Michael Frayn, ultimately collaborating on 18 productions in London, New York, Sydney, and Paris. The most famous shows to come out of this collaboration are Noises Off, Democracy, and Copenhagen, the latter of which earned Blakemore a Tony Award for Best Director of a Play in 2000. Blakemore set a record that year, also winning a Tony for Best Director of a Musical for his revival of Kiss Me, Kate, starring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie. He is still the only director to manage this feat.

Blakemore brought Angela Lansbury back to Broadway after decades in Terrence McNally’s Deuce, opposite Marian Seldes, and then led her to her fifth Tony Award and an Olivier for Blithe Spirit, which would be his final Broadway production.

Among Blakemore’s other credits are the Broadway musicals City of Angels and The Life, the latter of which he directed in London at the age of 89 in 2017. His final production was a revival of Copenhagen at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2018.

He is survived by his second wife, Tanya McCallin (separated), his three children, Conrad, Beatie, and Clemmie, and three grandchildren.