The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2019 – Creative Arts: Theatre

Lynette Linton
Daniel Lynch
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis4 October 2019

Lynette Linton

Artistic director, Bush Theatre | NEW
At 29, Leytonstone-born Linton saw her hit production of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat transfer from the Donmar to the West End and announced an ambitious season of debut plays from young writers for her first season in charge of West London’s new writing powerhouse.

Rachel O’Riordan

Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

Artistic director, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
Born in Cork in 1974 and trained as a ballet dancer before she got into directing, the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre’s new boss has bold plans to reshape this venerable but tricky theatre’s agenda, including revivals of Martin McDonagh and Mike Bartlett plays.

Gwendoline Christie

Gwendoline Christie Progress 1000

Actor
London theatre had long lost the imperious Christie to Game of Thrones and Star Wars, until Nicholas Hytner tempted the 40-year-old to the Bridge Theatre to play a ground-breaking, majestic Titania, who gets a radical upper hand on Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Michelle Terry

Artistic director, Shakespeare’s Globe
She used her childhood in Weston-super-Mare as grist for her beautifully understated sitcom The Café, and has had defining roles at the National, RSC, Donmar and Royal Court. But it is as artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe that Terry, 40, has made her greatest mark, prioritising inclusion and vibrancy and engaging with Shakespeare and his contemporaries on a visceral level.

Rebecca Frecknall

Director | NEW
Her revelatory staging of Summer and Smoke at the Almeida — where she is an associate director — propelled 33-year-old Cambridgeshire-born Frecknall to the front rank. If her subsequent Three Sisters proved more contentious, it nonetheless confirmed her singular vision.

Wendell Pierce

Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

Actor
Born in New Orleans and trained at Julliard, 55-year-old Pierce has a great pedigree on and off Broadway, but was best known to British audiences as Detective Bunk Moreland in The Wire until his shattering portrayal of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic and in the West End.

Danai Gurira

Actor and writer | NEW
She all but stole Marvel’s smash-hit Black Panther from the men, then Iowa-born Gurira, 41, went on to wow Young Vic audiences with her rich study of race, religion and colonialism in The Convert, with her superhero star Letitia Wright. Will someone please bring back Eclipsed?

Andrew Scott

Actor
Playing the priest in Fleabag may have shot him to a level of stardom even beyond his appearances in Sherlock and Spectre, but Dublin-born Scott, 42, shines brightest on stage. Following a radical Hamlet for Robert Icke, he returned to the Old Vic for an equally bold take on Noel Coward’s Present Laughter which had audiences doing spontaneous standing ovations.

Marianne Elliott

Ki Price / Emulsion London Limited

Director
The coruscating Death of a Salesman and a joyful, gender-swapped version of Sondheim’s Company proved that 52-year-old Elliot and her producing partner Chris Harper had absolutely cracked the West End, three years after leaving the National Theatre, where War Horse was among their triumphs. In November, The Bridge Theatre will stage Elliott & Harper Productions' The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe for the festive season.

Tom Hiddleston

Actor
To many he’s the Night Manager or Loki in the Marvel movies, but London-born Hiddleston is never away from the stage for long: his Hamlet, directed at RADA by Kenneth Branagh, was the must-see/can’t-see hit of 2017 and his performance in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal opposite Zawe Ashton was so superb it’s now moved to Broadway.

Jamie Lloyd

Director
It is a testament to the charisma of the vegan, heavily-tattooed 38-year-old Lloyd that he lured so many stars, and such impressive audiences, to his Pinter at the Pinter season in the West End. He’s run his own company since 2013.

Florian Zeller

Playwright
What’s the French for wunderkind? The Paris-based Prix Goncourt alumnus, 39, has quietly become London’s most popular playwright, with challenging, compelling dramas The Height of the Storm, The Father, The Mother and this year’s staging of The Son, which moved from the Kiln to the Duke of York’s.

Roxana Silbert

Artistic director, Hampstead Theatre | NEW
Born in Argentina in 1964, Silbert had an early job reading scripts for the Hampstead Theatre — this September she finally took over there as artistic director, having worked at the Royal Court, RSC, Paines Plough and Birmingham Rep. Her intriguing first season includes plays by Francis Ya-Chu Cowhig, Jordan Tannahill and Tom Morton-Smith.

Cush Jumbo

Actor | NEW
The author of Josephine and Me, star of the Good Wife and OBE recipient, London-born Jumbo, 33, will play Hamlet at the Young Vic in 2020.

Kwame Kwei-Armah​

(Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd)
Daniel Hambury/@stellapicsltd

Actor, writer, artistic director, Young Vic
Hillingdon-born Kwei-Armah, 52 — one of the nicest men in London theatre — has built on David Lan’s strong legacy to make the Young Vic a place of thrilling action and experiment: Death of a Salesman and The Convert were palpable hits, and his troubled collaboration with Idris Elba, Tree, won over critics. Coming soon: Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet, and a new version of Blood Wedding.

Hayley Atwell

Actor
A riveting presence on screen — and yet another Brit co-opted into the Marvel universe — but London-born Atwell, 37, also regularly throws her talent and her clout behind challenging stage work, following a #Metoo Measure for Measure at the Donmar with a searing Rebecca West in Ibsen’s Rosmersholm opposite Tom Burke.

Ella Hickson

Writer
Hickson’s plays provoke heated debate, but always have something radical and challenging to offer: after unpacking power and gender structures in The Writer at the Almeida, the Surrey-born 34-year-old experimented with sound design and explored the interior of her main character’s head in Anna at the National.

Rufus Norris and Lisa Burger

Artistic director and joint chief executives, National Theatre
He had a hit with Small Island and in his fifth year as artistic director of the National, 54-year-old Norris — alongside joint chief executive Burger — has programmed an enticing, wide-ranging season including new plays by Lucy Kirkwood, Moira Buffini and comedian Francesca Martinez, plus collaborations between Clint Dyer/Roy Williams and Richard Bean/Oliver Chris.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh

Producer and theatre owner
The 72-year-old Enfield-born uber-producer who started as a stagehand owns eight West End theatres, will shortly introduce a new staging of Mary Poppins to a roster that includes Cats, Phantom and Les Mis, and was given the Lebedev Award at the 2018 Evening Standard Awards for services to theatre.

Robert Icke

Director
Everybody’s favourite iconoclast, Icke, 32, rebuilds classic plays from the ground up, chiefly at the Almeida, where he was an associate director to Rupert Goold for six years. His Oresteia, his Uncle Vanya and his Wild Duck were revelatory: the last production of his Almeida tenure was an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler.

Michael Longhurst

Matt Writtle

Artistic director, Donmar Warehouse
After his shattering revival of Caroline, or Change transferred from Hampstead to the West End, Bromley-born 38-year-old Longhurst kicked off his tenure at the Donmar with a timely revival of David Greig’s Europe: his first season also embraced new plays from Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Alice Birch and a comic riff on Richard III, Teenage Dick.

Sonia Friedman

Producer
If a straight play or a musical has cred and critical kudos on Broadway or in the West End, chances are that 54-year-old Londoner Friedman was involved. Rosmersholm, All About Eve, The Inheritance, The Book of Mormon and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child are or were part of her company’s stable: let’s hope her New York production of Mean Girls the musical comes to London soon.

Nica Burns

Producer and theatre owner
With her American partner Max Weitzenhoffer, London stalwart Burns, 64, runs six West End theatres and continues to operate as an adventurous producer: she helped facilitate the London premiere of David Mamet’s Bitter Wheat, the transfer of the Globe’s all-female Emilia, and backed the exuberant musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

Dame Rosemary Squire and Sir Howard Panter​

(Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures)
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

Theatre owners
Theatre’s most powerful husband-and-wife team (aged 70 and 63 respectively) are no longer in charge of the massive Ambassador Theatre Group they founded and its stock of London theatres, but they retain shares in the company and are building a new empire balancing producing and screenings of live performances with ownership of theatres, cinemas and stage schools through their Trafalgar Entertainment brand.

Matthew Warchus

Artistic director, Old Vic
In five years of running the Old Vic, the preternaturally youthful, Kent-born Warchus, 50, has redeemed it from the shadow cast by his predecessor Kevin Spacey, although the hits (Present Laughter, All My Sons, Fanny and Alexander) have been balanced with misses (Mood Music, anyone?). This summer, he lured Daniel Radcliffe to appear in Beckett, and mounted a stage adaptation of the cult classic Local Hero, with music by Mark Knopfler.

Dame Maggie Smith

Actor
No one but Smith could have invested A German Life at the Bridge — a seated, two-hour monologue about collusion with fascism — with such slippery nuance, pathos, and even wit. A triumphant return to the stage after 12 years for one of our greatest theatrical talents, during which she gained new fans in Downton Abbey and Harry Potter. But don’t you dare call her a national treasure: imagine the look she’d give you.

Sir Ian McKellen

Adrian Lourie

Actor
He’s done Shakespeare, panto, Tolkien, X Men and Coronation Street, been a campaigner for LGBT rights and became a minister to officiate at his friend Patrick Stewart’s wedding. And to celebrate his 80th birthday he performed a fund-raising one-man show in more than 80 venues across the country, which in turn led to a West End run, also for charity. Sir Ian — or Serena as he likes to be called — we salute you.

Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr

Co-founders, Bridge Theatre
Two years after they opened the first Bridge Theatre by City Hall, former NT artistic director Hytner, 63, and his producing partner Starr are preparing to build a second, 600-seat venue in King’s Cross, scheduled to open in 2021. At the original Bridge, one-woman shows from Laura Linney and Dame Maggie Smith, and a delirious Dream, compensated for some early disappointments, and the post-show madeleines still smell divine.

Vicky Featherstone

(Alex Lentati )
Alex Lentati

Artistic director, Royal Court
In her six years at the helm of the Sloane Square institution, Surrey-born Featherstone, 52, has continued to question and reinvent the role of a new writing theatre. This has produced scabrous recent hits like Cyprus Avenue and White Pearl; from September, a season entitled A Year of Work will include scripts by the diverse likes of Caryl Churchill, Tim Crouch, EV Crowe, Sabrina Mahfouz and Debris Stephenson.

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Composer, producer and theatre owner
The man behind Cats, Phantom, Joseph, School of Rock and many classics, Kensington-born Lloyd Webber, 71, owns six West End theatres and tries out new musical talent in his seventh venue, The Other Palace. Presented with the Lebedev Award at the 2013 Evening Standard Theatre Awards, he has done as much as anyone to shape theatreland.

Sophie Okonedo

Getty Images

Actor
London-born Okonedo won best female actor at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year for her performance in Antony and Cleopatra alongside Ralph Fiennes, who won best actor. This year, the 51-year-old starred in the hit indie movie Wild Rose with Jessie Buckley and Julie Walters and was given a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours.

The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better. #Progress1000