Anderson, Lindsay Gordon

Anderson, Lindsay Gordon (1923–94), English director, whose stage work developed in tandem with a notable film career. He worked predominantly at the Royal Court, where his productions included Willis Hall's The Long and the Short and the Tall and Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (both 1959), a musical, The Lily-White Boys (1960), Frisch's The Fire-Raisers (1961), and a dramatization of Gogol's The Diary of a Madman (1963), which he helped to adapt. In 1969 he joined William Gaskill in the running of the theatre, where he directed David Storey's The Contractor and In Celebration (both 1969), Home (1970), The Changing Room (1971), The Farm (1973), and Life Class (1974), and Orton's What the Butler Saw (1975). He has also worked for the National Theatre ( Frisch's Andorra, 1964, and Storey's Early Days, 1980) and the Chichester Festival Theatre (Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, 1966). In 1975 he directed Chekhov's The Seagull and Ben Travers's The Bed before Yesterday for the company at the Lyric Theatre. He made rare incursions into the commercial theatre with Billy Liar (1960), by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, and William Douglas Home's The Kingfisher (1977; NY, 1978). More recent work includes In Celebration in New York (1984), Philip Barry's Holiday at the Old Vic (1987), and Storey's The March on Russia (1989) at the National.