Obituary: Influential figure at Oxford Playhouse Gordon Stratford dies of Covid-19

Gordon Stratford’s expertise won him the respect and affection of all who worked with him. Dame Judi Dench sent him a bottle of champagne on his 90th birthday.

He was 34 when he took over as company manager of Frank Hauser’s Meadow Players in 1961. He succeeded Hauser’s first manager, Elizabeth Sweeting, who in January that year became Administrator of the University Theatre when it took over the running of the Beaumont Street building to provide a platform for student productions.

Hauser pioneered the staging of neglected classics and exciting new plays with big names like Dame Sybil Thorndike and future stars like Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Sean Connery. He financed his productions by touring them, with the occasional West End transfer.

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Mr Stratford managed his first transfer, a revival of Jean Anouilh’s Dinner with the Family, which opened at the New Theatre, London, in December 1957, and was also responsible for Hauser’s staging of A Passage to India, starring Dilys Hamlet and Zia Mohyeddin, which played to packed houses at the Comedy Theatre, London, in 1960.

The Oxford Playhouse

At Oxford he introduced Larry Nolan, as resident stage carpenter, vital he insisted if productions were to tour larger theatres, and in 1967 recruited Glyn Robbins, son of Betty Robbins, who with daughter, Sheila, ran the company’s wardrobe department, as the company’s PRO: a key appointment, it led to the development of an arts marketing policy.

In 1970 Mr Stratford inspired one of Hauser’s hit productions, Kean, starring Alan Badel and Felicity Kendal, by coming across a translation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s forgotten play in Blackwell’s Bookshop. But probably his most significant contribution that year was leasing the Old Fire Station, a stone’s throw from the Playhouse in George Street, which the County Fire Service had just vacated, as the company’s headquarters. It provided one engine room for scene painting, one for rehearsals, several offices and a basement for Betty and Sheila Robbins’s wardrobe.

Sadly Meadow Players acquired it just as the Arts Council was ceasing to regard Mr Hauser as its golden boy. The growth of other regional companies on the same model meant the demand for its funds was much greater. Although he was still producing the occasional hit production they insisted he wipe out his debts and he decided to call it a day.

The last production of his farewell summer season in 1973, Ferenc Molnar’s The Wolf with Judi Dench, Leo McKern and Edward Woodward, was another hit. It transferred to the Apollo Theatre, where Arthur Thirkell of the Daily Mirror hailed it as one of the most glittering comedies to grace the London stage. Mr Stratford then moved to Nottingham Playhouse as administrator. From there he moved to Leatherhead as administrator of the Thorndike Theatre, ending his career. He died on January 22.

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His partner in later life, Jan Bailey, died in 2016. His ex-wife, Pamela McGrath, whom he met on A Passage to India, and their two daughters, Rebecca and Michelle, survive him.

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