Michael Boyd Dies: Director Who Revived Royal Shakespeare Company Was 68

Michael Boyd, who revived the fortunes of the Royal Shakespeare Company as its artistic director, died today of cancer, his family announced. He was 68.

Boyd replaced RSC predecessor Adrian Noble in 2003, departing nine years later. In 2012, he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honors for services to drama. Many felt that he was being rewarded for keeping the RSC intact.

Noble came under attack from all quarters for shifting the company from its London base and for revealing plans to have the RSC theater in Stratford-upon-Avon demolished.

During his tenure, however, Boyd led the organization’s successful transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford, a $179.3 million project that won a 2011 Royal Institute of British Architects award and was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

But it was in a rehearsal room with actors where Boyd made his mark.

Working with Toby Stephens, who was playing the title role in Hamlet, Boyd enthused his leading man by telling him to think of Shakespeare’s Danish tragedy as “a thriller with the same kind of gothic allure as Batman.”

In that way, Boyd made the Bard more accessible to audiences who shunned the classics. He never dumbed them down — instead he enthused his casts to deliver the text as written but inject their line readings with a jolt of energy.

Boyd knew how to make Shakespeare thrilling.

Under his leadership, the RSC staged The Complete Works Festival in 2006, performing all of Shakespeare’s 37 plays, long poems and sonnets in association with 30 visiting companies from across the world.

A Histories Cycle season included Henry IV Parts 1, 2 and 3 and Richard III. A theatrical coup was to persuade acting titan David Warner to return to the RSC after a 40-year absence to play the lovable drunken rogue Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1.

Boyd directed all eight of Shakespeare’s history plays from 2005-08. The highlight of the season was The Glorious Moment, where all eight plays were staged over four days, with 34 actors playing some 264 parts. The curtain call was electrifying.

Another of Boyd’s RSC productions had David Tennent and Alexandra Gilbreath starring in Romeo and Juliet.

His family statement today noted that Boyd’s career took him from training in Moscow on a British Council scholarship to artistic director of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow’s East End from 1985-96 and the RSC, which he joined as an associate director in 1996.

Born on July 6, 1955, in Belfast, Boyd’s earliest ambition was “to be a fireman.” He studied at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, West London, and Daniel Stewart’s College in Edinburgh, followed by the University of Edinburgh.

The play was always the “thing” with Boyd, but that meant offstage as well. He enjoyed a good joke, cooking and food.

He was once asked who would play him in the movie of his life. “Bill Nighy, if I was lucky,” he replied.

Boyd is survived by his partner, Caroline Hall, and three children, Daniel, Gabriella and Rachael.