Prospect Theatre Company

Prospect Theatre Company, founded as Prospect Productions in Oxford in 1961. After three successful summer seasons it became a touring company based on the Arts Theatre, Cambridge, with Toby Robertson (1928– ) as its Artistic Director, 1964–79. It soon achieved an outstanding reputation for its high standard of acting and ensemble playing and its staging of classic plays with brilliant costumes but minimal sets. From 1967 it had a unique association with the Edinburgh Festival, where it presented numerous productions. After 1969, when the association with Cambridge ended, the lack of a base large enough for its extended activities was a severe handicap, until in 1977 a highly successful season at the Old Vic Theatre, recently vacated by the National Theatre company, led to its establishment there, and a change of name two years later to the Old Vic Company. Among its notable productions were Richard II in 1968 and Marlowe's Edward II in 1969, Ian McKellen playing the title-role in both. A production of Hamlet with Derek Jacobi in 1977 was taken on an extensive overseas tour, being seen at Elsinore, Denmark, and in China, marking the first visit by a British company to the People's Republic. In 1980 Toby Robertson was succeeded by Timothy West (1934– ), who had first joined the company in 1966, when he played Prospero in The Tempest, his many later roles including King Lear (1971) and Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost (1972). West's first season as Artistic Director included a much criticized but commercially successful production of Macbeth with Peter O'Toole and The Merchant of Venice with West himself as Shylock. The company appeared to be prospering when it lost its Arts Council grant, and it had to be disbanded in 1981.