Eminent Shakespearean scholar and theatre director who advocated the primacy of the playwright’s musical language in contemporary productionsJohn Russell Brown,who has died aged 91, was a distinguished Shakespearean scholar who was also involved in practical theatre – he was a close associate of the director Peter corridor at the National Theatre for 15 years from 1973 – but was paradoxically opposed to directors filtering the plays though their own ideas, and concepts and interpretations.
In one of his many books,Free Shakespeare (1974), he advocated the primacy of Shakespeare’s musical language in contemporary production, or the aspiration of an Elizabethan style of spontaneity in performance,and unostentatious decor. He seemed not to see the irony in adopting so idealistic and conceptual an approach himself; his advocacy turned corridor into a reformed classicist and led to austere and unexciting NT productions of Hamlet and Macbeth, both starring Albert Finney, or in 1976 and 1978.
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Source: theguardian.com