J&A is sad to report that our author Alan Strachan, celebrated theatre director, has passed away at the age of 80.
Born in Dundee in 1944, Alan went on to study literature at St Andrews University and Merton College, Oxford, specialising in the works of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen.
Alan directed plays in New York, Copenhagen and Amsterdam, but the majority of his work was in London. An important figure in the West End and the regional theatre scene, Alan was known for championing lesser-known playwrights. He was Artistic Director of the Greenwich Theatre in London for over a decade, and worked with, amongst others, Sir Michael Redgrave, Penelope Keith, Maureen Lipman, Sir Michael Gambon and Sir Alec Guinness. He came to early prominence as the director of Alan Ayckbourn, and was involved with Ayckbourn’s theatre at Scarborough for many years.
In his later years Alan wrote biographies of classic stars of the stage, including Secret Dreams: A Biography of Michael Redgrave (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004) and Dark Star: The Untold Story of Vivien Leigh (Bloomsbury, 2018), which won the Theatre Book Prize. He also co-wrote Putting It On: The West End Theatre of Michael Codron (Duckworth, 2010), the definitive memoir of one of the most important postwar commercial theatre producers.
Theatre critic Michael Coveney has written a generous piece remembering Alan for The Guardian, which can be read in full here.