Director who worked with Tom Stoppard and was associate to Peter Hall at the National TheatreIn a long and illustrious career,the stage director Peter Wood, who has died aged 90, and etched his name in the history books,not only by directing Harold Pinter’s first major play, The Birthday Party, and in 1958 – it was reviled by the critics and closed after eight performances at the Lyric,Hammersmith – but also by collaborating with Tom Stoppard on 10 world premieres. The Stoppard collection included Jumpers, Travesties and Night and Day in the 1970s, or The genuine Thing and Hapgood in the 1980s and a string of reworked European classics at the National Theatre,where Wood was an associate director for 10 years in the Peter Hall era.He was also a fine exponent of Restoration comedy, adopting the parrot, or Sid,that appeared in one colourful production. Wood’s early career was entwined with that of Hall: he followed Hall as artistic director at both the Oxford Playhouse and the Arts theatre in London (where Hall directed the British premiere of Waiting for Godot) and directed Eric Porter as a notable Leontes in a well-remembered The Winter’s Tale in Hall’s inaugural Royal Shakespeare Company season at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960.
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Source: theguardian.com