Bogdanov, Michael

Bogdanov, Michael (1938–), director of Welsh/Russian parentage. He was Associate Director of the Tyneside Theatre Company, 1971–3 (see NEWCASTLE PLAYHOUSE), before moving to Leicester as Associate Director of the new Haymarket Theatre and Director of the Phoenix Theatre, 1973–7. After a spell at the Young Vic, 1978–80, he became an associate director of the National Theatre in 1980, soon being involved, as the play's director, in the controversy over Brenton's The Romans in Britain. His other productions at the National included Calderón's The Mayor of Zalamea (1981), Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (1982), and Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take it with You (1983). He worked for the RSC on such plays as The Taming of the Shrew (1978) and O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman (1980), and directed the musical Mutiny (1985).

In 1986 he co-founded and became Joint Artistic Director of the English Shakespeare Company, designed to bring high-quality productions of Shakespeare's plays to the provinces. His populist productions of the plays in the ‘Wars of the Roses’ cycle featured 20th-century clothes and other anachronisms. The company visited several theatres abroad, amongst them the Tokyo Globe which it opened in 1988, and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, to which Bogdanov returned as Artistic Director, 1989–91.