John Doyle (director)

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John Doyle has been artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he has staged more than 200 professional productions during a 30+ year career.

Trained at the University of Georgia in the United States, for the past 10 years Doyle has been associate director of the Watermill Theatre, a 216-seat performance space in the English countryside of Berkshire. There he has become known for his unusual approach to musical theatre which features casts who are both actors and musicians, accompanying one another while simultaneously playing roles.

His 2004 staging of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd moved from the Watermill to the West End of London in 2005 (first to Trafalgar Studios and then the New Ambassadors).

In November 2005 he re-mounted Sweeney on Broadway, with Michael Cerveris playing the "demon barber" and Patti LuPone as his pie-baking accomplice, Mrs. Lovett.

For Doyle's next project, he moved to the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park to reinvent Sondheim's Company with a cast led by Raúl Esparza — again with actors who sing, dance and provide their own musical accompaniment. This production moved to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway with previews beginning October 30, 2006 and opening officially on November 29, 2006. [stub from an article in The Sondheim Review. Used with permission and can be edited here as appropriate.]