Nigel Playfair
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Nigel Playfair (1874-1934) was the great actor-manager of The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in the 1920s.
He starred in The Mermaid Society's well-received 1904 London production of The Way of the World by William Congreve and went on to produce a very effective modern run twenty years later at The Lyric with Edith Evans as Millamant (1924).
By then Playfair was well known. He had produced Shakespeare's As You Like It for the opening night of the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1919, and brought it back to the Lyric in April 1920. Critics derided an unconventional set and costumes by Claud Fraser, but in what Shakespearean scholar Sylvan Barnet calls the play's "first modern production", their spare, evocative design was later acknowledged as a groundbreaking departure from the unimaginatively literal Shakespearean production typical of the time.
As early as 1914, Fraser had also begun to think up designs based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. His innovative set and costume designs premiered at the Lyric Theatre on June 5, 1920, in what is now considered to have been another of Playfair's masterpieces.
Playfair is credited with a major influence on the BBC's 1923 wireless Shakespeares, the first produced by that organisation. He continued to work as a BBC producer for some years, and is credited with having commissioned Richard Hughes to write the world's first radio play, Danger, which was broadcast on January 15, 1924.
Playfair also appeared in a few motion picture films during the last years of his life.
He was knighted in 1928. The National Portrait Gallery holds a pen and ink caricature portrait of Sir Nigel Playfair by Harry Furniss.
Fortnum & Mason still markets Sir Nigel's Vintage Marmalade, and there is a Nigel Playfair Avenue in Hammersmith, near Ravenscourt Park tube station.
Publications
Playfair wrote two volumes of memoirs about the Lyric:
- The Story of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith (London: Chatto & Windus 1925) with Arnold Bennett & A. A. Milne
- Hammersmith Hoy. A Book of Minor Revelations (London: Faber & Faber 1930)
His satirical play When Crummles Played opened at the Garrick Theatre on October 1, 1928.
Movie appearances
- Lady Windermere's Fan (????)
- Perfect Understanding (1933)
- Crime On the Hill (1933)
- The Lady Is Willing (1934)
- Little Stranger (1934)
External Links
- Portrait (http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp03582&rNo=0&role=sit)
- Sir Nigel's Vintage Marmalade (http://www.fortnumandmason-usa.com/sirnigels_vintage_marmalade.html)