The Stage

David Giles

Published Tuesday 9 March 2010 at 11:00 by MW Wheeler

David Giles, an accomplished director in both television and theatre, had a long and distinguished career that continued right up until the time of his death.

Born in Yorkshire in 1926, he trained as an actor in Bradford, where he first worked with his partner, the designer Ken Mellor. He played the Angel Gabriel in The York Mysteries and directed the next production of it.

He had worked during the war as a Bevin Boy in mining, which perhaps helped to develop the stamina needed for multi-episodic serials for television and he honed his craft teaching and directing at RADA from 1956, and working in the then thriving repertory theatres, including Cambridge, Coventry and Cheltenham for Hazel Vincent Wallace.

Already skilled as an actors’ director, a BBC directors course (alongside Ken Loach) added technical skills and his first TV was episodes of the soap Compact. Noticed by the producer Donald Wilson, responsible for The Forsyte Saga (1967), David directed episodes 1-12 and 20-26 of the epic series starring Kenneth More, Maggie Tyzack, Susan Hampshire and Eric Porter.

There followed a huge list of TV work, from Vanity Fair, to Resurrection, Sense & Sensibility, The First Churchills, The Strauss Family, The Darling Buds of May, Fame is the Spur and others.

David also directed five of the history plays for The Complete Shakespeare, The Recruiting Officer, The Winslow Boy and When We are Married, plus many more. He turned his hand to A Murder Has Been Announced (Miss Marple, with Joan Hickson) The Bill, Just William and Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, a popular series on ten-minute French cooking and documentary dramas (On Shaw, Brunel and Lord Reith)

One favourite was The Mayor of Casterbridge, adapted by Dennis Potter, starring Alan Bates, Anna Massey, Jack Galloway, Anne Stallybrass and Janet Maw. This was the first serial recorded entirely on location using a two-camera video unit. The main actors had three weeks rehearsal, David wrote a camera script for all seven episodes and this enabled the production to be recorded at a rate of eight minutes per day, without rushing the actors (though design worked frantically). The Barchester Chronicles (adapted by Alan Plater) was another.

David never abandoned his first love of theatre, directing The Wood Demon and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Ian McKellen’s Actors Company, and the opening production of the rebuilt Lyric, Hammersmith, You Never Can Tell.

He worked at Stratford Ontario, at the Shaw Festival (Niagara on the Lake), and directed Antony and Cleopatra in Dallas following the success of a fund-raising (for the Globe) Shakespeare Evening at the Savoy, which was reprised there.

His later career focused on mostly new work, to which he brought both script-editing skills and development with actors. Smoking with Lulu transferred from the West Yorkshire Playhouse to the Soho Poly, starring Peter Eyre and Thelma Barlow (a friend since Bradford days).

Plays about Gilbert Harding and Fidel Castro toured the country, and The Quiz (starring David Bradley), which had its premiere in Eastbourne, as did a fascinating piece on the early life of Helene Hanff, adapted from her autobiographical book.

In amongst all this work, David always had time for friends. He was warm, loyal, thoughtful and kind. Throughout his career, he was able to make those who worked with him into a team, all wanting to do their best work and many of his colleagues became lifelong friends. He died on January 6, aged 83.