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Dateline: 28th October, 2007
Frank Hauser (1922 - 2007) Director Frank Hauser has died at the age of 85. For the last few years he had been in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Born in Cardiff in 1922 to a Polish emigré family, after serving in the Royal Artillery during the war he went to Christ Church, Oxford. He was directors of the Midland Theatre Company from 1945-55 and director of in Salisbury Arts Theatre 1952-53. He went into radio, working for three years, from 1948 to 1951, as a BBC drama producer where he worked on productions as diverse as Mrs Dale's Diary and Dick Barton, Special Agent for the Home Service (now Radio 2) and classics for the Third Programme (now Radio 3). He was sacked because he took time off to co-direct Alec Guinness,who was the other director, in Hamlet (a production which was to prove something of a critical disaster) at the New Theatre as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations. In 1956 he took over the bankrupt Oxford Playhouse as dircetor of the resident company, the Meadow Players. Richard Burton, whom he had directed in Henry V for the BBC, had given a large (and undisclosed) sum of money to revitalise the theatre and the newly formed Arts Council was aiming to regenerate theatre in the regions, so he took on the job and stayed until 1973, when Arts Council subsidies were declining. In fact, his success at the Playhouse - which included many West End transfers - is what he is best remembered for today. He atttracted many first class actors to his productions, among them Alan Badel, Jill Bennett, Dirk Bogarde, Jeremy Brett, Constance Cummings, Judi Dench, Joan Greenwood, Catherine Lacey, Ian McKellen, Leo McKern, Mary Morris, Yvonne Mitchell, Irene Worth and Gwen Watford - and then, in 1966, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Dr Faustus. The roll-call of playwrights was equally impressive, featuring, among others, Camus, Henri de Montherlant, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Giraudoux, Racine, Molière, Chekhov, Robert Bolt, Aristophanes, Julian Mitchell, Bernard Kops, Aldous Huxley and Hauser's own particular favourite, George Bernard Shaw. Most of his work after Oxford was fairly middle-of-the-road and not terribly successful. A love of panto, his stab at Cinderella in 1974, starring Twiggy, was not well received, although it was a lavish production, and it was mainly with productions of his beloved Shaw that he had his greatest success. His final production was in 1997, Always, the story of Edward and Mrs Simpson (which earned itself the backstage nickname Wallis and Vomit) at the Victoria Palace, a production which was not well received. He was awarded the CBE in 1968 and died on 14th October, 2007.
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