Partner Terence Rattigan,
Husband Sean Garvey
Queer Places:
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
5 Edith Grove, London SW10 0JZ, UK
Adrian Brown (April 30, 1929 - April 27, 2019) was a British theatre, television director and poet. He was nominated for a BAFTA with Peter Griffiths for his direction of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1985 and won an International Emmy for Thames TV in 1987 for an adaptation of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst starring Claire Bloom. He directed the world premiere of Less Than Kind by Terence Rattigan at the Jermyn Street Theatre, which was staged in early 2011. He has published two volumes of verse, and holds the title of the Grand Master of the Knights of Verse of the Eccentric Club. While an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, Brown first met
Terence Rattigan. They met again in Paris three years later and were to become lovers throughout the 1950s.
In 2011 Brown gave an interview to Mark Lawson on Radio 4 in which he recalled: I was working with the Marquis de Cueva's ballet company when we met. I'd just been punched by Nijinsky's sister. Other sources suggest, however, that they first met when Brown was preparing to play the role of Buttons in an Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) performance of Cinderella.
They became lovers, though Brown never met any of Rattigan's friends or family because mother might then discover that he was not quaite naice, that he had all these proclivities, and mother must be protected at all costs.
Yet Brown observed that the clandestine nature of the gay scene in the 1950s gave life an extra frisson: People say, oh, what a terrible time, Lily Law breathing down our necks, and the shadow of prison bars... not at all! We had a wonderful time and there were wonderful parties, we had much more fun than anybody else.
Brown and Rattigan remained friends until Rattigan's death in 1977, and in 2011 Brown directed the world premiere of the playwright's Less Than Kind, starring David Osmond, Sara Crowe and Michael Simkins, at the Jermyn Street Theatre.
The play, a Forties version of Hamlet, concerned a priggish 17-year-old socialist who returns from wartime safety in Canada only to discover that his widowed mother is living in sin with a rich industrialist, a minister in the wartime government.
The original play had been hijacked by Alfred Lunt and his wife
Lynn Fontanne, when they agreed to star in the West End premiere in 1944. To oblige them, Rattigan rewrote the play, making the tone lighter, and changed the title to Love in Idleness.
The reviews were enthusiastic for the Lunts, but not for Rattigan, and the revised play was not staged again in London until 2017. In the meantime Brown had come across a copy of the original and his production, noted one critic, beautifully captures the piece's period flavour and its mixture of comedy and deeper feeling.
Brown was clear-eyed about Rattigan's place in the pantheon. Terry used to say: Shakespeare, Chekhov and me, he told The Daily Telegraph in 2011. He felt he was on his way to writing the great masterpieces. Then it all dried up.
Adrian Ronald Frederick Brown was born on April 30 1929. His career in the theatre began on National Service in the Army when he directed productions for Combined Service Entertainment.
At Exeter College, Oxford, where his tutors included Neville Coghill, Tolkien and CS Lewis, he performed in several OUDS productions. After a spell as a stage assistant with the Grand Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas he worked in rep before joining the BBC, where he was involved in some dozen drama productions, including directing Margaret Rutherford and Kenneth Williams in
Somerset Maugham's The Noble Spaniard, before moving to Thames Television.
He continued to direct stage plays, and in 2009, with his civil partner
Sean Garvey, who predeceased him, he founded Planet Theatre Productions, winning the best production prize at the 2010 London Fringe Awards for
Moliere's The School for Wives. He also worked on opera productions, his Verdi's Nabucco at Holland Park winning the Kenneth More Award.
He was nominated for a Bafta with Peter Griffiths for his direction of The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1985, and won an International Emmy in 1987 for an adaptation of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst starring Claire Bloom.
He published two volumes of poetry.
My published books:
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