Rising Star: Jamie Lloyds Ascent to Superstardom in the Theatre World
In the world of theatre, a director's name can often be as significant as the plays they stage. Jamie Lloyd, a director whose career has taken off in recent years, is a prime example of this phenomenon. His work has garnered him a reputation as a master of the stage, and his recent extramural staging of Don't Cry for Me Argentina in Evita at the London Palladium has only solidified his status as a celebrity in the industry.
Lloyd's journey to the top of the theatre world was not an overnight success. He grew up in rural Dorset and was first introduced to live theatre by seeing Michael Jackson on tour. He attended the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and quickly demonstrated his talent with his first production, The Caretaker, which transferred from the Sheffield Crucible to the Tricycle in London in 2007. The production was notable for its use of a creepy score by Ben and Max Ringham and the insistent presence of Nigel Harman's Mick.
Over the next few years, Lloyd's career flourished, and he became known for his trust in actors and his ability to extend their range. He cast Zawe Ashton as Salome dancing to a ghetto-blaster, Douglas Hodge as a quasi-Beckettian figure in Inadmissible Evidence, and Katherine Kelly as Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer with a rustic graciousness.
Lloyd had a rare faith in the language and setting of classic plays. His production of Oliver Goldsmith's comedy at the National was robustly true to the late-18th century, and his Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic was unequivocally Jacobean. Without distorting authorial intention, Lloyd also made you look again at a work you thought you knew. By casting Elena Roger as the heroine in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Passion at the Donmar in 2010, Lloyd changed the whole balance of the show: Roger's sickly Fosca was a lonely woman embodying the power of unconditional love.
Lloyd's quality was further proven by his six-month season in 2018-19 of all of Pinter's one-act plays, which demolished the myth that Pinter's shorter pieces are inferior to his full-length plays. The season showed that Pinter was preoccupied with analyzing the roots of power, regardless of the chosen form. Lloyd also attracted an astonishing range of actors, including Antony Sher for One for the Road, Tamsin Greig for Landscape and A Kind of Alaska, Martin Freeman and Danny Dyer for The Dumb Waiter, and Jane Horrocks and Luke Thallon for The Room.
Lloyd's own productions were often revelatory. His production of Betrayal with Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton, and Charlie Cox stripped the action of circumstantial detail and reminded us that there are three sides to an emotional triangle: in other words, that the deceived partner is always present in the imagination. The production transferred to Broadway and was nominated for numerous Tony awards, since when Lloyd's star has been in the ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, as with any successful artist
