William Bridges-Adams

[1] After Oxford, Bridges-Adams began working in the professional theatre in 1911 under the managements of Laurence Irving, William Poel, Nugent Monck, Harley Granville-Barker and George Alexander.

His first London production was in 1912 (a play called Job, for the Norwich Players),[3] a company he continued to work with alongside Monck for several years.

[4] His designs for stage scenery included The Loving Heart at the New Theatre in 1918 ("Quite the happiest feature of the production is Mr Bridges-Adams's scenery," said The Times)[5] and no fewer than nine Gilbert and Sullivan operas for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, beginning with The Gondoliers (second act), Patience, Iolanthe, The Sorcerer, The Pirates of Penzance, Princess Ida, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard, and all in 1919,[6] and Ruddigore (1921).

He secured the services of Theodore Komisarjevsky to direct The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth, and he himself produced 29 of Shakespeare's plays between 1919 and his retirement in 1934.

[1][2] In 1936 Bridges-Adams directed Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at Covent Garden, and he was appointed to the council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and to the building advisory committee for the National Theatre.