Peter Brook
Minimalist director who could evoke a universe in an empty space
WHILE MANY film directors are stars in their own right, theatre directors tend to have a lower profile. Except for Peter Brook. A game-changer who shook theatre up and made it exciting and vital again, Brook, who has died aged 97, did away with heavy props and elaborate costumes, replacing them with pared downstaging, minimalist clothing and an athleticism the British stage had not experienced before.
A firm believer in the “less is more” principle, Brook loved the freedom of the stage where “you can evoke a universe in an empty space with an actor just picking up a stick or a bottle or an empty wine cup”.
In truth, the concepts Brook implemented so successfully had been floating around for some time but no-one else had managed to marry the avant-garde with the mainstream as seamlessly as he did. We may be used to it now but it was Brook who first gave Shakespeare a “makeover”, clearing the detritus of centuries to reveal it as still relevant and capable of enthusing modern audiences. His thrilling productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, at the time still in its infancy, helped it make its name.
Always an internationalist, Brook took inspiration from many sources: from the experimental theatre of Jerzy Grotowski and Bertolt Brecht to the closer to home Joan Littlewood, whom he called “the most galvanising director in mid-20th century Britain”.
However, it was the ideas of Antonin Artaud that inspired him in 1970 to found with Micheline Rozan the International Centre for Theatre Research, which has been based at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris since 1974.
A multinational company comprising actors, dancers, musicians and other performers, it was the epitome of colour-blind casting decades before it became widely accepted. In fact, colour, or race or gender were never an issue for Brook and, from early on in his career, he looked beyond Britain, and Europe, searching for inspiration in Africa, India and the Native American reservations of California.
Possibly the most famous example of this approach is his nine-hour production of the Indian epic Mahabharata in 1985, which starred 21 actors from 16 countries.
Peter Stephen Paul Brook was the son of Simon Brook and Ida Jansen, both Jewish immigrants from Latvia who had settled in Chiswick, West London.
It was a comfortable home thanks to Brooklax, a popular laxative Simon had invented, but not a particularly Jewish upbringing.
Brook described his father as an intellectual who had been involved with the Russian revolution before moving to Britain. To him Jewishness was something “to do with religion
and rabbis”; Simon chose to be “a modern, assimilated Englishman”. Although the family never hid their Jewish origin, Peter and his brother Alexis were brought up “in a completely secular atmosphere”.
His passion for the theatre, especially Shakespeare, showed up early: aged 10 he staged a full-length puppet production of Hamlet for his family. Yet at Oxford, where he studied English and Modern Languages, he flirted with becoming a composer, journalist, painter and film-maker. Although he went on to direct a couple of outstanding films — Lord of the Flies in 1963 and Meetings with Remarkable Men in 1979 — it was soon clear that the stage was where he felt most at home. However, the hours spent on other disciplines taught him important lessons that would shape his work: the piano lessons with Vera Vinogradova when he was 12 taught him the importance of ‘flow’, of sharing what you learn with others and an intense dislike of rote performance.
Brook’s directing career started at London’s long-gone Torch Theatre in 1943 with Dr Faustus (for which the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley acted as consultant). After a spell as assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and Love’s Labour Lost in Stratford-upon-Avon, he spent three years (1947-50) at the Royal Opera House as director of productions.
Possibly the most memorable — and controversial — of his works during this time was Strauss’s Salome in 1949, designed by none other than Salvador Dalí. The audience wasn’t impressed. They particularly hated the large, geometric headdresses which muffled the sound and they made their displeasure clear: the production lasted barely six performances.
Not that Brook let a few boos stop him. A few years later his staging of Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, Titus Andronicus, featured a Lavinia (Vivien Leigh) with mutilated tongue and hands and spooky music to match.
His 1964 production of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade was so effective in creating a sense of disruption and fear that it left the audience terrified. Set in the Charenton mental asylum, it was a play within a play with actors playing the asylum’s inmates staging a performance about the French Revolution directed by the asylum’s most notorious inmate, the Marquis de Sade.
Brook’s 1970 production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, a minimalist affair featuring trapeze was a huge success but also a farewell to Britain; a disillusioned Brook moved to Paris.
From 1974 onwards, his work with the International Centre for Theatre Research focused on what he famously called “holy” theatre, that is, theatre that goes beyond the mundane to deliver a near-spiritual experience. One of his bigger productions was the 2005 Tierno Bokar, based on the life of a Malian sufi, and Battlefield, a 2015 Young Vic production, which has been described as a “postscript” to the Mahabharata.
Active well into his 90s, writing, directing, travelling, Brook won several Tony and Emmy Awards well as a Laurence Olivier Award.
Brook married actress Natasha Parry in 1951. She predeceased him. He is survived by their two children; Irina, an actress and director, and Simon, a director, and by a grandchild, Prosper Jemmett.
Peter Stephen Paul Brook: born March 21, 1925. Died July 2, 2022