R.I.P. Val May

[Reza]

Val May




Val May, who has died aged 84, was one of the busiest and most
versatile directors of his generation, and was notable for the links
he forged between regional theatre and the West End.

Val May


Val May at the Theatre Royal, Bristol Photo: PA

6:39PM BST 10 Apr 2012 London Telegraph

May ran the Bristol Old Vic for 14 years and the Yvonne Arnaud,
Guildford, for 16; and whenever he saw the chance of a show getting a
run afterwards in London he seized it.

Whether a regional rep should simply serve local playgoers or be used
to try out plays for West End managers was an issue which May was
able to ignore for most of his career, probably because the royalties
from his productions when they moved to London were of benefit to the
rep they came from.

This enabled him to cast for his rep productions some of the leading
actors of the day, since they could nearly always count on a transfer
to London, even New York. May's list of successful transfers helped
the regions to become the West End's chief source of new work.

At one stage he had as many as five productions from Guildford
running in the West End; and in the 1960s his output from Bristol was
so prolific that the capital could count on at least one arresting
new play every season. May was a director of taste and tact, if not
greatly daring, faring best with naturalistic, well-made plays. To
what might have seemed an ordinary proscenium arch drama or comedy he
gave a pace and polish which made it popular with the critics and the
public alike .

He was particularly good with thrillers ("The trick of making a
thriller good," he used to say, "is to treat it as seriously as you
would a proper drama"), social dramas, musical comedies and classical
revivals. When he took over at Guildford in 1976 he declared: "I am a
great respecter of the commercial theatre."

Valentine Gilbert Delabere May was born in Bath on July 1 1927 and
educated at Cranleigh School and Peterhouse, Cambridge. Having
trained at the Old Vic Theatre School, his first professional
production was of Cocteau's The Typewriter at the Watergate, London,
in 1950. In 1953 he became artistic director of the Ipswich Theatre,
and four years later took over the Nottingham Playhouse , from where
he was invited to revive Richard II at the London Old Vic in 1959.
His Nottingham production of Celebration, an early Waterhouse-Hall
kitchen-sink regional comedy, was later seen in London at the Duchess.

In 1961 May was appointed director of the Bristol Old Vic's Theatre
Royal, the oldest working theatre in Britain, and that year staged
Mourning Becomes Electra for the London Old Vic. In 1962 his
production of War and Peace also moved there. The next year he
supervised the taking over of a small former civic theatre in
Bristol, the Little, and sent A Severed Head to London and Broadway.
In 1964 his revival of Love's Labour's Lost went to London's Old Vic
and on a tour of Europe.

Other plays which transferred to London included The Killing of
Sister George (1965); Conduct Unbecoming (1969); It's a Two-Foot-Six
Inches Above the Ground World (1970); Poor Horace (1970); Trelawny
(1972); and The Card (1973). This trend continued during May's spell
as Director of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (1975-92), with
plays such as Banana Ridge (1976); The Dark Horse (1978); and House
Guest (1981).

May also directed Little Me (Prince of Wales, 1984); Royal Baccarat
Scandal, (Chichester, 1988, and London, 1989); Pirandello's Henry IV
(London, 1990); and The Accused (Haymarket Theatre Royal, 2000).

As Director of the Ludlow Festival from 1993 to 1996 he was
responsible for The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III and King Lear.
He also took productions to the United States, Hong Kong and Latin America.

He was appointed CBE in 1969.

Val May married first, in 1955, Penelope Sutton, with whom he had a
daughter. He married secondly, in 1980, Petra Schroeder, with whom he
had another daughter.

Val May, born July 1 1927, died April 6 2012