Phillips, Robin

Phillips, Robin (1942– ), English director, who was first an actor, making his début as Mr Puff in Sheridan's The Critic at the Bristol Old Vic in 1959. He became an associate director there a year later, and acted at Chichester in 1962 and the Oxford Playhouse in 1964 before becoming an assistant director with the RSC in 1965. He was Associate Director at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, 1967–8, but returned to the RSC to direct Albee's Tiny Alice (1970). Later in the same year he directed Ronald Millar's Abelard and Heloise (NY, 1971). Returning to Chichester, he directed Anouilh's Dear Antoine in 1971 and Fry's The Lady's not for Burning in 1972, in which year he played Louis Dubedat in Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma there. After a season as Artistic Director at the Greenwich Theatre in 1973 he took up the same position in 1974 at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, which he ran dynamically until 1980. Among his notable productions were Congreve's The Way of the World (1976), As You Like It (1977), Macbeth, and Coward's Private Lives (both 1978), all with Maggie Smith, and King Lear (1979) with Peter Ustinov. His production of Edna O'Brien's Virginia (1980), with Maggie Smith as Virginia Woolf, was seen in London in 1981. In 1985 he directed Antony and Cleopatra at Chichester, but in 1987 and 1988 he was back in Stratford running the Young Company at its Third Stage.