Michael Hallifax

Published Tuesday 15 April 2008 at 10:25 by Barbara Eifler

When Michael Hallifax died, on February 8, the theatrical profession said goodbye to a manager and administrator who helped change the face of theatre in postwar Britain.

Born on September 18, 1919, in Winchester, he’d had only the briefest taste of his passion, theatre, before serving in the Royal Artillery. But after the war, married by now to actress Elizabeth Howarth, he became a stage manager.

His 2004 book, Let Me Set the Scene, gives an astonishing roll call of all the postwar great and good of British theatre he has worked with, but this is no pretentious name-dropping. As Sir Peter Hall has pointed out, he simply had an enviable talent for turning up, on three momentous occasions, in the right place at the right time.

The first was when Hallifax became part of George Devine’s team starting the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1956, where he stayed for three years - three years that changed the face of British theatre with seminal work such as John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.

He then became manager of Stratford’s Memorial Theatre - just at the moment when Peter Hall started the RSC - and stayed for six years, first in Stratford and then at the Aldwych.

His final move was to the new National Theatre with Sir Laurence Olivier - yet again a pioneer with a brand-new venture, first at the Old Vic, then in the new National building - where he remained, albeit in various roles and titles, until his retirement in 1988.

This quiet genius clearly took the stage management virtues of planning, anticipation and efficient organisation (his desk at the National, reputedly, was always clear) to new peaks.

But what leaps from the page - and from the speeches given at his memorial at the National on April 1 - is his passion for theatre and his empathy with the artists he worked alongside.

Whether directors, actors, designers or technical staff, they all trusted him completely, and with good reason. To quote Richard Mangan, he had “dignity without pomposity, efficiency with humanity, patience - up to a point - and a great capacity for seeing the joke.”