Margaret Webster
Margaret Webster (1905-) was an actress, producer and director.
Contents
Biography
Daughter of the British actors Benjamin Webster and May Webster, she grew up in England, and became particularly famous for her work on and in Shakespeare, initially with the Old Vic and at Stratford-Upon-Avon, and later in America. Perhaps her greatest triumph as director was Othello (1943), starring Paul Robeson in the title role and Jose Ferrer as Iago, which ran for 296 performances, by far the longest run of a Shakespearean production on Broadway, a record that has not been remotely approached since.
Author of the book Shakespeare Without Tears (1942).
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
She visited South Africa at the start of the 1960s to direct plays for NTO (including Eugene O'Neill’s A Touch of the Poet, 1961) and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (Kushlick-Gluckman, 1962).
Sources
See The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll.
Rinie Stead, 1985b.
Tucker, 1997.
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