Laughter in the Dark

Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer. Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist. He was Head Boy at Ashville College, Harrogate and attended Wadham College, Oxford, where his... contemporaries included Kenneth Tynan, Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. He had the unprecedented distinction of being elected President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club , in addition to being theatre critic for the university magazine Isis. In 1955, in his directing début, Richardson produced Jean Giraudoux's The Apollo of Bellac for Television with Denholm Elliott and Natasha Parry in the main roles. Representative of the British "New Wave" of directors, he developed the ideas that led to the formation of the English Stage Company, along with his close friend George Goetschius and George Devine. He directed John Osborne's seminal play Look Back in Anger at the Court, writing both the theatre and playwright into British theatrical history.
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