STRATFORD, Ont. — Michael Langham was a visionary, masterful and fiercely passionate stage director who raised the bar at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in its early days and made the careers of many of its biggest stars, theatre greats said Sunday at a memorial in his honour.
“He single-handedly formed the true character and the backbone of the enterprise,” legendary actor Christopher Plummer, a Stratford veteran, said onstage at the memorial at the Festival Theatre.
“He opened his heart and put it on the stage,” he said as dozens of fellow actors, directors and Langham’s loved ones looked on from the audience.
Langham served as artistic director at Stratford from 1956 to 1967. He died in January at age 91 at his home in England after he failed to recover from a chest infection.
Though he was born in England, Langham acted and directed on stages mostly in the U.S. and Canada. He first read and developed a love of plays when he was a prisoner of war while serving in the British Army.
Langham landed at Stratford’s renowned classical repertory theatre in 1955, when founding artistic director Tyrone Guthrie invited him to do a guest production of Julius Caesar.
The following year, Langham succeeded Guthrie as artistic director in a season that marked the festival debut of Toronto-born Plummer, who played the title role in Henry V. William Shatner played a supporting role in the production.
“It was Michael who gave me my career,” said Plummer, 81, noting Langham was a taskmaster with the highest of standards.
“He broke me down and built me up,” said Plummer, a Tony Award winner who was nominated for an Oscar for his role in 2009’s The Last Station.
“He was my Dr. Frankenstein and I was his monster.”
Langham was also instrumental in shaping the stage career of Winnipeg-born Leonard Cariou, hiring him for the festival in 1960.
“I came thinking, ’I don’t know what I would ever do in a Shakespeare play,”’ said Cariou, who went on to achieve an illustrious, Tony-winning theatre career.
“But I spent most of that first year in the rehearsal room or in the theatre with him directing a couple of plays and realized that this is what I wanted to do — that I wanted to attack the Shakespeare cannon.”
Langham served as artistic director of the festival through 1967, taking it from its humble original venue — a tent — to permanent theatres. He also extended the season, established the Stratford Music Festival and introduced prominent musical directors, including Glenn Gould.
“His spirit infuses this building, this stage and this company,” said Des McAnuff, the festival’s current artistic director, who was 27 when Langham hired him to direct and teach at New York’s Juilliard drama school.
Langham continued to direct at the Stratford festival long after his tenure as artistic director. In 1991, he led Brian Bedford in a production of Timon of Athens that went to Broadway in 1993 and won three Tony nominations.
In 2008 at Stratford, Langham staged what would be his last production — Love’s Labour’s Lost, his signature show at the festival — right before his 90th birthday.
The following year, the festival established the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. This year’s festival season is also dedicated to him.
Langham is also fondly remembered for contributing to the establishment of the Canada Council and the National Theatre School.
Langham, said McAnuff, was an “intellectual architect” and visionary renaissance man of the festival who acted as its “artistic conscience for over 30 years. He was our Johnny Apppleseed,” he said.
Langham also served two terms as artistic director of the Juilliard drama school and was artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse in California in the 1960s, during its dormant period.
In 1971, he become artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he served until 1977.
He is survived by his wife, actress Helen Burns, his son Christopher, daughter-in-law Christine and five grandchildren.