Happy Birthday George Devine
George Devine (1910-1966) - founder of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court and one of the most important English theatre directors of the twentieth century - was born 112 years ago today. This blog is based on the entry I wrote for him in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Theatre Directors (edited by Maria M. Delgado and Simon Williams).
George Devine (photograph by Sandra Lousada)
Devine was an actor, director, and theatre manager, but is now best known as the first Artistic Director of the English Stage Company (ESC) at the Royal Court, which he led from 1955 until his death, and which would become a leading centre for contemporary playwrights’ theatre in the Anglophone world. His career was, however, characterised not so much by commitment to a writers’ theatre as by its position at the leading edge of a historic transition from the Edwardian theatre, led by actor-managers, to the partly subsidised sector that grew under the leadership of directors and commercial managements in the post-war period.
The only child of a middle-class suburban family, Devine was educated at boarding schools and then Oxford, where he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, becoming its president. Devine persuaded John Gielgud to direct Romeo and Juliet for the society, a production that transferred to London and launched the careers of Peggy Ashcroft (Juliet), its young designers Elizabeth Montgomery and Margaret and Sophia Harris (known collectively as Motley), and Devine (Mercutio). After leaving Oxford, he became Motley’s business manager.
As a young man, Devine developed as an actor, despite some physical awkwardness, but he became interested in other aspects of theatre production, including lighting, which he studied at Motley’s studio in the West End. In 1935, he worked with Michel Saint-Denis to develop plans for the London Theatre Studio (LTS), of which he became assistant director and where Motley ran the design course. Devine then combined teaching and directing at the LTS with professional work in the theatre, as lighting designer, as an actor of character parts, and finally as a director, his first professional production being of Alec Guinness’ adaptation of Great Expectations (1939), the basis of David Lean’s 1946 film.
Devine spent the war in India and Burma, during which time he developed plans for a new version of the LTS. These came to fruition in the Old Vic Theatre Centre (OVC), which he opened with Saint-Denis and Glen Byam Shaw in 1947. The OVC plans consisted of a School, a touring company (producing theatre for young people), and an experimental theatre, but in 1952 tensions with the Old Vic management and governors brought the OVC to a premature end. Devine then returned to acting and freelance directing, including productions of King Lear starring Michael Redgrave, and The Taming of the Shrew (both 1953) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1954) at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and opera at Sadler’s Wells.
At the same time, Devine was developing plans for another venture that would break substantially with traditional repertory and that he hoped would place theatre on the same footing as literature and music in British cultural life. The ESC, which Devine planned with Tony Richardson and producer Oscar Lewenstein, opened at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956. Famously, its third play was Richardson’s production of Look Back in Anger, but it also featured The Crucible (1956), directed by Devine, who also played Governor Danforth. As well as nurturing the careers of young English directors such as William Gaskill and John Dexter, Devine’s tenure at the Royal Court featured productions of Ionesco and Beckett, including the British premiere of Endgame in Beckett’s English translation (1958), directed by Devine, who also played Hamm. He worked with his partner, the designer Jocelyn Herbert, many times, including on the first Anglophone production of Beckett’s Play (National Theatre, 1964), designed by Herbert with Devine directing and designing the lighting.
Despite his death at 55 from a stroke, Devine has a strong claim to be among the leading British directors of the twentieth century. His significance was not, however, due to stunningly original productions. Instead, Devine’s career was characterised by a commitment to learning, practicing and sharing a worker’s understanding of theatre production. This he did by developing sustained collaborations with other artists that could exceed his personal vision and outlast his leadership.
