Sean Mathias - Theatre Director

Theatre Director

Mathias' career as a theatre director began in 1988 with Exceptions. The following year, he directed a revival of Bent, the award-winning play by Martin Sherman that had opened on Broadway in 1979 starring McKellen. Performed as a benefit, that performance featured McKellen, Richard E Grant, Ian Charleson and Ralph Fiennes. After receiving critical acclaim, Mathias directed a full run in 1990 with McKellen alongside Paul Rhys and Christopher Eccleston, winning the City Limits Award for Revival of the Year.

Mathias went on to direct theatrical plays both in London and on Broadway, including Pam Gems' adaptation of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya with McKellen and Antony Sher, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads (again with McKellen), and Noel and Gertie starring Patricia Hodge and Edward Petherbridge.

In 1994, Mathias won the London Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Director for Noël Coward's Design for Living (with Rachel Weisz, Clive Owen, Paul Rhys and Rupert Graves) and Jean Cocteau's Les Parents terribles, starring Sheila Gish, Frances de la Tour, Alan Howard and Jude Law. The latter transferred to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in 1995 as Indiscretions, with Law joined by Kathleen Turner, Eileen Atkins, Roger Rees and Cynthia Nixon. It earned nine Tony Award nominations including Best Director of a Play.

Mathias directed his first Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music, at the National Theatre in London in 1995, with Judi Dench and Siân Phillips. He had worked with Phillips before, directing her in another Pam Gems adaptation, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff in 1993. Mathias worked with Siân Phillips again in 1997, directing her as Marlene Dietrich in Marlene, which transferred to Broadway two years later and gained two Tony Award nominations.

Other London directorial credits include Antony and Cleopatra, starring Alan Rickman and Helen Mirren, in 1998, and Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer with Sheila Gish in 1999. Mathias' career then moved to New York, where, in 2001, he directed McKellen and Helen Mirren in August Strindberg's Dance of Death. He went on to direct this in London and Sydney in 2003. Also, in 2001, he directed an off-Broadway production of Servicemen by Evan Smith. He followed this the following year with a Broadway revival of The Elephant Man starring Billy Crudup at the Royale Theatre.

In 2002, he returned to Sondheim to direct Company at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater in Washington, D.C. as part of its Sondheim Celebration, with a cast including John Barrowman and Lynn Redgrave. Speaking to the Stephen Sondheim Society at the time, he said: "I always wanted to do Company; it's the first musical I ever fell in love with." As a youngster in South Wales, Mathias said, he used to listen to the original Broadway recording of the show and sing "The Ladies Who Lunch" with friends: "I couldn't believe the songs, the cynicism, the sexuality."

For the 2004 Christmas season, Mathias directed the pantomime Aladdin at the Old Vic in London, with McKellen as Widow Twankey alongside Maureen Lipman, Roger Allam and Joe McFadden. Due to its huge success, Mathias reunited with McKellen and Allam for a second run the following Christmas, with Frances Barber in the cast.

In 2005, Mathias directed Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Shoreditch Madonna at the Soho Theatre in London, starring Francesca Annis and Leigh Lawson. He returned to the US to direct Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, with Annette Bening, Alfred Molina and Lothaire Bluteau, which opened at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2006.

Mathias has had a home in South Africa since 1997 after visiting the country with the National Theatre in 1994 for a series of workshops. He made his South African directing debut in 2004 with Jean Anouilh's Antigone, starring the South African actor John Kani. "I had fallen out of love with London," he told the Financial Times in October 2004. "I felt I had exhausted my life in London. I couldn't invent myself any more. My life was frenetic and there was never time to absorb experiences. Then I had a series of deaths of people close to me, my mother died and a long-term relationship broke up. After that, right then, I felt I had failed." In 2007, he directed novelist Edna O'Brien's play, Triptych, in Johannesburg, starring leading South African actor Dorothy-Anne Gould.

Mathias has been based once again in London since 2006 and now lives in Hackney with his partner Paul.

He began 2008 by directing a revival of Ring Round the Moon, Christopher Fry's adaption of Jean Anouilh's comedy, L'Invitation au Château, starring Angela Thorne at London's Playhouse Theatre. He followed this with the UK production of Triptych at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

He directed McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, which toured the UK in early 2009 before opening at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London in May 2009. It was his first production as 2009 artistic director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

His second play at the Theatre Royal Haymarket was a stage version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, adapted for the stage by British playwright Samuel Adamson and starring Anna Friel, which opened in September 2009, with some critics commenting negatively on the adaptation though noting the actors' "good performances" and the play's "fluent staging".