Having improvised a show about capital punishment at the Oxford Playhouse,Braham Murray,then an English undergraduate student, encountered the full weight of censorship. Both the death penalty and censorship were still in force in 1964, and Murray’s script came back with blue pencil marks over most of it.
Murray, who has died aged 75, pleaded with the Lord Chamberlain to allow his play, Hang Down Your Head, about the execution of US scientists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, but in vain. The Rosenbergs had been executed after being convicted of sending nuclear state secrets to Soviet Russia in 1951. The Lord Chamberlain finally consented to an eyewitness account to be read out, but not acted.
Murray presented the revue at Oxford’s Experimental Theatre Company, of which he was artistic director, using circus imagery, with three clowns facing an empty chair. But the graphic descriptions of the three jolts of electricity, used to kill the couple was so intense that some members of the audience could not take it and walked out. Despite the Lord Chamberlain’s curbs on Murray’s freedom of expression, the play, featuring the putative stars, the Pythons, proved a phenomenal success. It transferred to the West End and New York, winning Murray third place in the Director of the Year awards, hot on the heels of Laurence Olivier and Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Braham Murray was born in N.W. London, the son of Gertrude née Prevezer and Sam Goldstein. His father left home when he was four, and after their divorce his mother married Philip Murray, who owned a clothes shop, and whose name he assumed. After prep school he attended the Jewish house at Clifton College, Bristol, where he described the housemaster Phil Polak as “one of the biggest influences in my life,” adding that the house was run on progressive, cultural and constructive lines. He was made “captain of drama – with a badge to prove it.
“I wanted to be an actor,” he recalled in a JC interview with Jenni Frazer in 2003. “I was in Wolf Mankowitz’s The Bespoke Overcoat. I played Anthony in Anthony and Cleopatra.”
Clifton was followed by University College, Oxford – which he described as a hotbed of people wanting to act or direct. He read English because it “had something of a theatrical reputation.” The fact that Murray was an aspiring actor was enough to get him through the entrance exam.
But the success of Hang Down Your Head led Murray to abandon his degree and he went on to direct A Winter’s Tale for the Birmingham Rep. He became the youngest artistic director in the country at 22 when he took over the running of the Century Theatre in the North of England. In 1969 he joined directors Casper Wrede, Michael Elliott and James Maxwell and designer Richard Negri to form the 69 Theatre Company in Manchester. He transformed the “filthy, decaying, cold, superb Royal Exchange building” in the heart of Manchester into the city’s flagship playhouse, opened by Laurence Olivier in 1976 as the Royal Exchange, Manchester. He recalled walking into the building for the first time on a winter’s afternoon – “and there was a tingle. We said yes.We’ll build the theatre here.”
Murray’s work over four decades made him one of Britain’s longest serving directors. His repertoire ranged from classics to musicals and full scale operas, working with many of the of the country’s leading actors on West End and New York productions. Among them were Sir Tom Courtenay, Vanessa Redgrave, John Mills, Judi Dench, Maureen Lipman, Robert Lindsay and Brenda Blethlyn. His credits included She Stoops to Conquer, Uncle Vanya, The Good Companions, The Black Mikado, The Cabinet Minister and Lady Windermere’s Fan.
He directed The Glass Menagerie, which toured nationally, the world premiere of Edna O’Brien’s Haunted, both starring Brenda Blethyn, which also toured to New York and Sydney. Many of his productions were designed by his second wife Johanna Bryant, whom he had met when artistic director of Century Theatre. He directed the world premiere of Skellig The Opera, composed by Tod Machover,
In 2012 he stepped down from the Royal Exchange Theatre of which he had been artistic director since 1976. His valedictory work was the Leonard Bernstein musical Wonderful Town – a major collaboration between the Exchange,The Hallé Orchestra and the Lowry Theatre, which won critical acclaim. Murray received an OBE in January 2010 for services to drama.
In his autobiography The Worst it can be is a Disaster (Methuen Drama) he openly discussed his two marriages; to Lindsay Stainton in 1968, which barely lasted the year, and his second to Bryant, which ended in 1993, although they continued to work together. A second book followed; How to Direct (Oberon Books) and he was awaiting the publication of a third by Whitecrow Books; What You Will, when he died. A passionate music lover, he was also due to direct a new opera by Tod Machover, Schoenberg in Hollywood, for the Boston Lyric Opera Company due to be performed this winter.
A lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, he is survived by his two sons, Jake and Joe, and his partner Pat Weller.
GLORIA TESSLER
Braham Murray: born February 24, 1943. Died July 25, 2018
