He won the BAFTA 'Best Director' Award in 1960 for An Age of Kings, a television adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays.
Previously his productions of Shakespeare's As You Like It and Peter Luke's Hadrian VII had transferred from the old Birmingham Rep to London's West End, the latter going on to New York gaining Dews a Tony Award for its direction.
Other notable productions at the Rep included Hamlet, with Richard Chamberlain in 1969, Quick, Quick Slow (1969) a musical by Monty Norman and Julian More, based on a play by David Turner, who also scripted the musical, and The Sorrows of Frederick, an epic play about Frederick the Great by Romulus Linney, in 1970.
He also directed he original production of Royce Ryton's Crown Matrimonial, about the 1936 Abdication crisis, in the West End, with Wendy Hiller as Queen Mary.
He also directed productions in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Malta, Éire and Hong Kong.