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PHIL WILLMOTT CV SUMMARY DEC 2006

Phil has directed over forty productions around the UK from Shakespeare & musicals to cutting edge new writing. He is Artistic Director of his own multi award winning theatre company The Steam Industry (incorporating The Finborough Theatre and the open-air “Scoop” amphitheatre on the South Bank) an Associate Director of The Kings Head Theatre and was an Associate Artist of London’s acclaimed Battersea Arts Centre throughout the 1990s and Associate Director of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford.

Recent successful productions have included the tenth anniversary cast of Fame in the West End, A Midsummer Nights Dream in Dubai, Blowing Whistles (Croydon Warehouse Theatre and Sound Theatre, Leicester Square) Billy Liar, Athol Fugard’s Master Harold… and the boys & his own musical of Around the World in Eighty Days (Liverpool Playhouse, UK tour and German tour) Rent (Olympia, Dublin) Pal Joey (Nottingham Playhouse) Angels in America and Kiss of the Spider Woman (Sheffield Crucible) Oedipus, Agamemnon, Androcles and the Lion, The London Nativity, Treasure Island and Children of Hercules (the Scoop) and many other acclaimed London productions including Crime and Punishment, The Grapes of Wrath, Trelawney of the “Wells and Loyalties (The Finborough) Sweet Charity, Calamity Jane, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Uncle Ebenezer – a Christmas Carol, Titus Andronicus and the world premiere of Germaine Greer’s Lysistrata (BAC) Dracula (Open Air Theatre, Regents Park & BAC) I Love You, Your Perfect, Now Change and Liberace’s Suit (Jermyn Street) the UK premiere of Victor/Victoria, Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, & Brecht’s Arturo Ui (the Bridewell) Measure for Measure (Riverside Studios) Ring Round The Moon and Fings Aint Wot They Used T’be (The Kings Head). Don’t Let Me Down (Soho Theatre Company) Gemma Craven in Everything’s Terrific – Help! (Guildford) Romeo and Juliet (Central Drama School) Dick Daredevil, Patti Boulaye and Peter Polycapou in South Pacific, Adam Ant and Sylvester McCoy in Funeral Games and Michael Grandage in Venom (The Drill Hall) Roy Marsden in Treasure Island, (The Mermaid) Other work includes a studio season at The Open Air Theatre, Regents Park, development of three new musicals with The Royal National Theatre Studio and directing many British and Hollywood stars in the London Independent Film awards at The Café Royale. 

 As a writer many of his plays, musicals and adaptations have been published and are regularly produced around the world.

 ANDROCLES AND THE LION:
“GLORIOUS”
“ATTENTION GRABBING FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT”
“Inspired exuberance" “UNFORGETTABLE”
Rachel Halliburton TIME OUT
"A particularly clever choice"
Jeremy Kingston THE TIMES
“A TESTAMENT TO THE POWER OF FAITH”
Michael Billington THE GUARDIAN
"Many inventive touches from director Phil Willmott"
"This bright and breezy interpretation fits the scoop space and light-hearted alfresco mood perfectly"
Helen Chappell WHAT'S ON

 AGAMEMNON:
 "REMARKABLE"
"Contributes to the constant hum of war debate in London Theatre"
"Willmott's modern-dress production...manages to cast such a spell"
"We still feel the visceral horror of Aeschylus' revenge tale."
TIME OUT
"VISUALLY CAPTIVATING"
"Friskily topical"
"This approach lends the production the
accessibility crucial for such a diverse audience"
THE GUARDIAN
"HOW EXCITING"
"Willmott’s short, sharp production"
"Quickly harnesses the attentions of an audience
made up equally of the committed and the casual"
"A resonant slice of Greek tragedy that perfectly fits the space"
THE STAGE
"INTENSELY POWERFUL"
THE TIMES

Recommended
THE INDEPENDENT:
"In Willmott's sharp, modern-dress production, the man who was willing to barter his daughter Iphigenia's life to procure the winds needed by the Greek fleet arrives home as
a conquering hero, only to discover that not everyone agrees that the end justifies the means. The director has not set himself an easy task. The audience at this venue is diverse, ranging from serious theatre-lovers to wine-quaffing picnickers to people who have been drawn in by the spectacle. That's part of the charm of the event. Aeschylus' play, though, has a particularly involved and complex backstory and Willmott deserves credit for the way he has made this gripping and accessible to an eclectic crowd through re-enact- ments using model ships and characters in masks and a doll version of the sacrificed child.
With its machine-gun-wielding guards and its gung-ho returning soldiers who descend through the audience, the production conjures up a powerful atmosphere of the unease and moral muddle of a society where the old justifications
are unravelling and where only a fool would imagine military victory can abolish festering resentments at a stroke. The careful stage-management of the amplified homecoming address by Stewart Alexander's slightly Americanised Agamemnon indicates an underlying discomfiture, an impression exacerbated when he repeatedly tries to cut short the interventions of his wife Clytemnestra (Olivia Macdonald) with premature,
supposedly uxorious applause.
The Scoop's architecture is suited to Greek tragedy, its stone steps creating a creepy environment for the carpeted staircase up which Agamemnon walks to his offstage doom. With the fine Chorus imitating the thumping heartbeat and buzzing mental disarray of Kerry Skinner's vividly distraught Cassandra, there's a particularly charged intensity to the captive girl's preparations to follow the hero into what is, for her, a hideous and foreknown fate. Willmott himself appears as Clytemnestra's lover, Aegisthus, whom he portrays as an arrogant toff oozing the kind of cowardice that would sit out a war and wait for a woman to perform his vengeance for him. At the end, this new dictator is seen pointing a machine-gun at the crowd while backing nervously into the palace. It's an image resonant with the unresolved"
Paul Taylor THE INDEPENDENT

Scott Neal in Watch Out for Mister Stork

Dominc Arnold, Tom Barrie and Sophie Langham in Neil Simon's Star Spangled Girl

Howard Saddler as Othello in Iago

The all male cast of The Grapes of Wrath

Adam Ant as Caulfield in Funeral Games

Mark Collison in Crime and Punishment

Peter Stenson in Venom

Michael Chomiak as Feste in Ilyria

Bertie Parsons in Inherit the Wind

Michael Sapiaha as Dracula in a radical adaptation for the Open Air Theatre, Regents Park

PHIL WILLMOTT
DIRECTOR

FORTHCOMING
January - March 2007 Teaching
April 2007 Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing Liverpool Playhouse
June 2007 Gorky's The Lower Depths The Finborough Theatre
August 2007 Euripides's Helen of Troy & Disney's Jungle Book Scoop

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM JOHN GALSWORTHY' S LOYALTIES

Photographs from Treasure Island

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM BLOWING WHISTLES

PHOTOS FROM TRELAWNY

    The UK Premiere of VICTOR/VICTORIA
Musical by Blake Edwards, Henry Mancini, Leslie Bricusse & Frank Wildhorn
Bridewell Theatre London January 2004

"ONE OF THE HAPPIEST EVENINGS OF THEATRE
IT HAS EVER BEEN MY PLEASURE TO EXPERIENCE"
"This is one of those shows that just lifts the spirits.
THE AUDIENCE LOVED IT"
"Ria Jones as Victoria has more than a touch of Julie Andrews
about her and she is quite as divine"
"This five-star production directed by the wondrous Phil Willmott
is to be experienced and savoured" 
Theatre World
“IT’S ALL DONE WITH SUCH EBULLIENCE
IT WOULD BE HARD
NOT TO HAVE A GOOD TIME”
 “Willmott’s production creates a cabaret-like
milieu filled with louche festivity”
“Ria Jones as the cross dressing heroine
packs a mean punch and sings extremely well”
Michael Billington THE GUARDIAN
  “…Henry Mancini’s numbers go with a bang”
“RIA JONES GIVES A CRACKING PERFORMANCE
IN THE TITLE ROLE”
Warwick Thompson METRO 
“THIS LOVELY MUSICAL APPEALS TO
HEARTS AND MINDS”
 “Here is that rare thing a funny,
pleasure rousing musical”
“It’s sharp sexual satire grips”
 “To the petrified convention of Anglo-American musicals
Phil Willmott’s deft production of Victor Victoria
comes as an exhilarating exception”
Nicholas de Jongh THE EVENING STANDARD
  “Director Phil Willmott is unequalled as
regards intimate musical stagings
…and he manages that feat again here”
“Christopher Holt is a gloriously engaging queen as Toddy”
Ian Shuttleworth THE FINANCIAL TIMES 
Ria Jones: “Can do the razzle-dazzle alright”!
  “There’s something about a Willmott show
And there’s something about the Bridewell"
Madeline North - TIME OUT
"Gangsters, guns and gay nightlife,
performed with perfect panache"
"What makes the evening is Willmott's production, enacted by an energetic,
versatile cast who chuck every gram of cheek into the mix"
Timothy Ramsden Reviewsgate.com
“This show appreciably adds to the gaiety of nations”
“The theatre poses, tongue in cheek, as a louche Paris Nightclub of the 1930s”
“Ria Jones diminutive, ardently sung Victoria is
twenty-four carat woman”
“Stewart Alexander is adorable as King’s beefy body guard Squash”
Paul Taylor THE INDEPENDENT

Brecht's THE RESISTIBLE RISE OR ARTURO UI London Off West End 2002


"Phil Willmott proves why he is one of the most versatile, best and amazingly prolific directors around with this revival"
"He makes better stage pictures than almost anyone around, and here he is also blessed with a cast of uncommon talent. Peter Polycarpou is superb as Arturo Ui" 
THE GUARDIAN

Shakespeare's HENRY VIII London Off West End 2002

‘Henry VIII as we’ve never seen it before: pacy, atmospheric and modern... with a thrilling edge... A breath of fresh air’
EVENING STANDARD

"A brilliant creation"
"transposes Shakespeare into today’s modern world… An intriguingly sympathetic picture of the bitter rewards of power ’ METRO

‘Stunning set, bold lighting, strong performances... a bold reinvention which offers many pleasures’ TIME OUT

                                                                                                                         

MEASURE FOR MEASURE MALAYA
London Off West End 2002

"Phil Willmott has beaten the Bard at his
own game with this new adaptation"
"This is nothing less than
a production to cherish"
EVENING STANDARD

Shakespeare's TITUS ANDRONICS  London Off West End 2001

THE GUARDIAN: "If you see one thing this week  -

Germaine Greer's LYSISTRATA 
London Off West End 2000

“I LOVED IT"
"Phil Willmott’s production is as saucy and breezy as a seaside postcard. A Hellenic version of Up Pompeii that catches the Aristophanic spirit. Fast, broad, silly and profound” INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY.
 

ANGEL'S IN AMERICA
Sheffield Crucible 1999

“THE APPLAUSE WAS DEAFENING”
“One of the most important works of the American Theatre in the past three decades gets a tough, moving, harrowing production
from Phil Willmott."
"So much for the lack of interest in theatre outside London.”
 John Peter SUNDAY TIMES.