Bob Carlton (23 June 1950 – 18 January 2018) was an English theatre director and writer.
Carlton's hit musical combined rock'n'roll songs with some dialogue found in the works of William Shakespeare – primarily The Tempest – plus original action and dialogue adapting the plot and characters from Forbidden Planet, the 1956 science fiction film that play inspired.
He also employed parts of this formula in 1984 with From A Jack To A King, a similar jukebox musical adaptation of Macbeth with dialogue written in iambic pentameter.
Carlton wrote several other plays and directed episodes of the television soap operas Brookside and Emmerdale Farm and the children's series Streetwise.
[1] He was born in Coventry and attended King Henry VIII School,[2] read drama at the University of Hull and, after graduation, won an Arts Council Trainee Director's Bursary to the Belgrade Theatre in his hometown of Coventry.