Robin Midgley


Robin Midgley was a director in theatre, television and radio and responsible for some of the earliest episodes of Z-Cars and for the television version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Wars of the Roses.

Early life

Midgley was born in Torquay and educated at Blundell's School and King's College, Cambridge, where he directed plays with casts including Jonathan Miller, Sylvia Plath and Daniel Massey.
Midgley married, first, the playwright and psychotherapist Liane Aukin, and, in 1991, the dancer and choreographer Denni Sayers. His two sons from his first marriage are Baptist Minister Rev. Benjamin Midgley and Child Psychotherapist Dr. Nicholas Midgley.

Career

After Cambridge, Midgley was employed as a drama producer for BBC Radio and was posted to Jamaica, where he worked closely with the comedian and broadcaster Charles Hyatt.
Midgley’s first London stage production, Kill Two Birds, was at the St Martin's Theatre in 1961, and his first in New York City, Those That Play the Clowns, in 1966. He also worked for two seasons with Bernard Miles at the Mermaid Theatre, before taking charge of the Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester, in 1968, a post in which he continued while simultaneously opening the new Haymarket Theatre in Leicester as its first artistic director. Musicals of note were: Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, produced several times at the Haymarket, in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, and 1985. This became a great favourite with audiences and was developed at the Haymarket from its first shorter schools version into the full-blown musical we know today.
Midgley was later in charge of the Cambridge Theatre Company based at the Arts Theatre and the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.
His theatrical productions have included:
In later life Midgley gave acting lessons to young singers at the Royal Opera House, and taught and directed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.