Robert David MacDonald was born in Elgin, in Morayshire, Scotland on 27 August 1929, the son of a doctor and a tobacco company executive.
[2][1] During that time, he directed 50 productions[1] and wrote fifteen plays for the company, including The De Sade Show (1975), Chinchilla (1977), Summit Conference (1978 – later seen in the West End with Glenda Jackson, Georgina Hale and Gary Oldman), A Waste of Time (1980), Don Juan (1980), Webster (1983), In Quest of Conscience (1994), Britannicus (2002) and Cheri (2003).
[citation needed] In March 1989, he directed a production of John Home's Douglas, with Angela Chadfield in the role of Lady Randolph.
MacDonald was the great pioneer in this area, but Jeremy Sams, Francis Lamport, Mike Poulton and several others have also rid the plays of swagger and fustian.
"[4] One of MacDonald's early successes was War and Peace,[2][1][5] which he had translated from Erwin Piscator's 1955 German stage adaptation of Tolstoy's novel.