M < > Aidan McArdle Macbeth Richard McCabe Colin McCormack Alec McCowen Ian McDiarmid Martin McDonagh Malcolm McDowell John McEnery Peter McEnery Tom McGrath Frank McGuinness Jo McInnes Ian McKellen Peter McKintosh Hilton McRae Anna Madeley Madness in Valencia Dominic Mafham The Maid's Tragedy Major Barbara The Malcontent Michael Maloney Malvern Festival Man and Superman Man is Man Tom Mannion The Man of Mode The Man Who Came to Dinner Lesley Manville Marat/Sade Tony Marchant Claire Marchionne Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux Christopher Marlowe The Marquis of Keith The Marrying of Ann Leete John Marston Trevor Martin Ashley Martin-Davis Mary, After the Queen Mary and Lizzie Brewster Mason Daniel Massey Philip Massinger The Master Builder Maydays Measure for Measure Nancy Meckler Joe Melia Leonie Mellinger Melons Sam Mendes Men's Beano Mephisto David Mercer The Merchant of Venice The Mermaid The Merry Wives of Windsor The Meteor Roger Michell Thomas Middleton Midnight's Children A Midsummer Night's Dream Midwinter Arthur Miller Jonathan Miller Poppy Miller Joseph Millson Helen Mirren Misalliance A Miserable and Lonely Death Les Misérables Misha's Party Miss Julie The Mistake Katie Mitchell Tim Mitchell Ariane Mnouchkine Moby Dick Molière Molière (The Cabal of Saintly Hypocrites) Money A Month in the Country Richard Moore Hattie Morahan Christopher Morley Cherry Morris Clive Morris David Morrissey Moscow Gold Mother Courage The Mouth Organ Slawomir Mrozek Much Ado About Nothing Peter Mumford Murder in the Cathedral Gerard Murphy The Mysteries		Sam Mendes Sam Mendes's grandfather was the Portuguese-born Trinidadian novelist Alfred H. Mendes, a key figure in the cultural and political opposition to British rule in the Caribbean before the war. His father taught English at Reading University; his mother writes children's stories. Adrian Noble's RSC production of Antony and Cleopatra with Helen Mirren (1982) was an important early influence. Mendes started to direct plays at Cambridge. His professional breakthrough came when he was elevated from an assistant at Chichester to run the new studio space there, the Minerva Theatre (1989). He directed Heartlands, Summerfolk and Love's Labour's Lost, and was rewarded with an opportunity in the main house—Boucicault's London Assurance—when an established director withdrew. London Assurance, starring Paul Eddington, transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket. He next directed Judi Dench in The Cherry Orchard at the Aldwych. Terry Hands brought Mendes into the RSC in 1990. He began in the Swan with Troilus and Cressida, a production of extraordinary theatrical lucidity, brilliantly cast. Biting, darkly comic productions of The Alchemist (Swan, 1991) and Richard III (TOP, 1992), starring Simon Russell Beale, followed. The Tempest (RST, 1993) was a first-rate main house production. From 1992 to 2002 he was director of the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden. He persuaded the leaseholders to let him run the theatre as a producing house, and Equity to let him employ actors at provincial rates. His choices at the Donmar revealed a fondness for Stephen Sondheim (Assassins, 1992; Company, 1996, filmed by the BBC) and were almost all Anglo-American: Glengarry Glen Ross (1994); The Glass Menagerie (1995, also Comedy); Habeas Corpus (1996); The Front Page (1997); The Fix (1997); To the Green Fields Beyond (2000); Uncle Vanya (2002); and Twelfth Night (2002). The programming looked conservative when compared to that of the Almeida. Other productions: Kean (Old Vic, also Toronto, 1990) with Derek Jacobi; The Plough and the Stars (Young Vic, 1991); Oliver! (London Palladium, 1994); and, at the National, Edward Bond's The Sea (Lyttelton, 1991); The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Cottesloe, 1992) with Jane Horrocks; The Birthday Party (Lyttelton, 1994); and a fine Othello (Cottesloe, also Salzburg Festival, 1997) with Simon Russell Beale. In 1998 he directed Natasha Richardson in Cabaret on Broadway and Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen in The Blue Room at the Donmar. Soon after he shot American Beauty for Steven Spielberg's studio in Hollywood. The screenplay was risible but Mendes made an aclaimed film (and won five Oscars). Mendes's direction of plays is almost faultless in its good taste, flair and sensitivity to the source material. However, as the critics' darling, some of his work has been overrated. The Mendes phenomenon is better explained by his self-confidence and personal charisma (in the wake of American Beauty Spielberg poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Donmar). One sees American traits and an American outlook, not only in his decision to make Hollywood rather than British films, but also in all those Sondheim and other American musicals at the Donmar. The revelation of American Beauty was Mendes's command of the visual medium. Road to Perdition (2002) was even more striking, a succession of beautiful, thematically linked images. The climatic scene in a beach house filled with white light, using reflections to give two points of view and achieving the ghostly effect of a developing photograph, shows the extent to which Mendes combines a gift for image making with skills learnt in the theatre: so often his frames are composed to suggest depth, giving a 3-D illusion of space.	Director, b. Reading, 1965 Education: Magdalen College School, Oxford; Peterhouse, Cambridge RSC: Joined 1990 Productions: Troilus and Cressida (Swan, 1990/Pit, 1991); The Alchemist (Swan, 1991/Barbican, 1992); Richard III (TOP, 1992/Small-scale Tour, 1992/Donmar Warehouse, 1993/Japan and The Netherlands, 1993/Swan, 1993); The Tempest (RST, 1993/Barbican, 1994)
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		A Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare Company by Simon Trowbridge | Copyright © Simon Trowbridge, 2003-04 | HOME