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In Memoriam: Robin Phillips, 1942-2015

Robin Phillips, best known in Canada as a former artistic director of the Stratford Festival, died on Saturday (July 25).

He brought a new energy to Stratford when he took over as its head in 1975, a role he held for six seasons, directing many of the festival productions during those years. They included, in his first season, a memorable production of Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure featuring Brian Bedford, who would become one of Stratford’s most popular performers.

Born in England and with a background in theatre there, Phillips brought a number of British stars to Stratford, notably Maggie Smith, Margaret Tyzack and Peter Ustinov.

He directed Smith and another British actor, Jeremy Brett (who attained fame on TV as Sherlock Holmes), in a 1976 production of The Way Of The World, one of the best productions of his tenure, and that same year invited John Hirsch to direct another stellar show, a version of Three Sisters that featured Smith, Martha Henry and Marti Maraden as the title trio.

In the 1979 season, he enticed Peter Ustinov to the festival for an excellent staging of King Lear.

But he also highlighted the work of Canadian performers, among them Hume Cronyn (who appeared with his wife, Jessica Tandy), Martha Henry, William Hutt, Jackie Burroughs, Richard Monette – who would later go on to hold the artistic director’s chair – Douglas Rain and Tony Van Bridge.

After he left as company head, he returned to helm several festival productions and also ran other Canadian companies, the Grand Theatre and the Citadel Theatre.

Toronto audiences saw several of his productions, among them Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love, several operas for the Canadian Opera Company, Macbeth and The Elephant Man.

But his most lasting local influence was a pair of shows he staged at Harbourfront Centre for the newly formed Soulpepper Theatre. In 1998 Soulpepper’s head, Albert Schultz, who had worked (along with several other Soulpepper members) with Phillips at Stratford’s Young Company a decade earlier, invited him to direct the first two productions for the troupe. The result was a sometimes biting version of Molière’s The Misanthrope and an extraordinary production of Schiller’s Don Carlos, featuring Brent Carver in the title role.

Phillips’s work helped establish the reputation of the group that has since become Toronto’s most highly regarded classical company.

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