Theatre director, playwright and actor Peter Gill, who has died aged 86, has been described as a “gentle man with a fierce intelligence” who had a “quietly seismic” influence on British theatre.
Cardiff-born Gill performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and appeared in films including HMS Defiant and Zulu before embarking on a successful theatre directing career.
Among those to pay tribute was Welsh actor Luke Evans, who credited Gill with launching his own career.
Gill’s agent Mel Kenyon said his work had a “rare emotional delicacy” that was “beautifully observed and finely tuned”.
Gill is closely associated with his work at the Royal Court in London, where he is credited with introducing the plays of English writer DH Lawrence to the theatrical world.
Born in Cardiff on 7 September 1939, he was raised in a working-class community and remained “fiercely proud of his Welsh heritage throughout his life”, according to an obituary written by his agency Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.
He pursued an acting career from the age of 18 before moving into theatre, most closely associated with the Royal Court, where he championed three Lawrence plays A Collier’s Friday Night, The Daughter-in-Law and The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd.
“Their success revived interest in Lawrence’s dramatic work and helped spark a renaissance of his plays in London theatre circles after decades of relative obscurity following his death in 1930,” the agency said.
He also presented two of his early plays, The Sleeper’s Den and Over Gardens Out, at the theatre, before becoming associate director in 1970.
In 1976, he became artistic director of Riverside Studios, with his production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It marking the official opening of the Hammersmith-based theatre that year.
He also adapted Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard for the theatre, helping transform it from a “small fringe theatre” into a “venue regarded as the equal of the leading theatres of the West End”.
In 1980, he was appointed OBE for his services to theatre, also founding the National Theatre Studio in 1984 and running it until 1990.
