The two key British theatre directors of the middle decades of the 20th century were near-contemporaries and close friends called Peter. But while Peter Hall was instrumental in setting up and running the biggest theatres – first the Royal Shakespeare Company and then the National Theatre – Peter Brook set himself up to run away from them. He spent the last five decades of his career at a theatre of his own in Paris, where he worked on long and idiosyncratic projects that would come to the UK only as a date on a world tour.
But, despite this long absence, which he disliked being described as an exile, Brook’s impact on the theatre of his home country was huge. Directors, especially of the classics, are often at their best with either the visual or the verbal aspects of theatre, but Brook was brilliant at both.
