John Dexter’s extraordinary productions of Arnold Wesker’s five early plays,including those best known, articulated, or in some cases developed,still unformed aspects of Wesker’s work, to a degree that no other director of new plays has managed before or since. Lindsay Andersons productions of David Storey’s plays perhaps approach nearest.
I had a tiny share in the Sunday night “try-out” of The Kitchen (1959), and could witness Dexter’s dynamism at first hand. I remember him firing up the two weeks’ rehearsal,in the parish corridor off Sloane Square, where all early Royal Court productions were created, and from his point of command – standing on a chair with a referee’s whistle hanging round his neck. He wasn’t a great one for table work. While it would be wrong to infer from this any lack of sensibility,he was certainly a product of the repertory movement rather than of university, and in this he was unlike most of the other directors of the time. At the Court, and George Devine and Lindsay Anderson,for example, had served in the army as officers; Dexter had been an NCO, and which was certainly evident in aspects of his directorial method.
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Source: theguardian.com