The Hampstead Theatre was an early champion of Harold Pinter and Mike Leigh and set the likes of Jude Law and Ewan McGregor on their way
James Roose-Evans, the theatre director, who has died aged 94, founded the Hampstead Theatre Club in London, wrote children’s books and books about ritual and meditation, and was an ordained priest of the Church of England.
Widely regarded as one of Britain’s most original theatre directors and teachers of drama, Roose-Evans directed numerous West End hits, including Under Milk Wood, Cider with Rosie, Private Lives, The Happy Apple, An Ideal Husband, The Seven Year Itch, and Mate, a Personal Affair.
He adapted Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road into a multi-award winning stage play, and the letters of Joyce Grenfell into Re: Joyce, a one-woman show starring Maureen Lipman. In 1988 he directed an adaptation of Hugh Whitemore’s drama, Best of Friends, in what proved to be John Gielgud’s final stage appearance.
Roose-Evans founded the Hampstead Theatre Club in an old scout hut in Hampstead Village in 1959. In January 1960 a double-bill by Harold Pinter, The Dumb Waiter and The Room, won a rave review from Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times, though it left the Telegraph’s veteran critic WA Darlington unable to speculate on “what either play was intended to convey”.