Frank Dunlop was a theatrical visionary and the Young Vic is his lasting legacy | stage

FRank Dunlop, who has died aged 98, never received the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. He was a populist pioneer and a true visionary, who created the Young Vic Theater in London from scratch, radically changed the nature of the Edinburgh Festival, and attempted, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, to introduce institutional permanence to New York theatre. He was also a personality full of boisterous energy. Even in his nineties, when I would see him on his annual return to Edinburgh, he would talk about future projects. In fact, it reminded me of a line from a great Latin poet: “Entertainment, Catullus, does not agree with you.”

The Young Vic is his lasting legacy but one forgets the extraordinary achievement it was in 1970. It was a magnificent building erected in nine months from a former butcher’s shop, and was inspired by Dunlop’s memories of the post-war dream of a theater center operating under the auspices of the Old Vic. Dunlop’s Young Vic had a similar relationship with the parent company of Olivier’s National Theatre, but it quickly established its own identity. Offering lively productions for young audiences at affordable prices, they blend the classics of Shakespeare and Molière with the best works of Beckett, Ionesco and Genet.

Nicky Henson, a key member of the great Dunlop and Jimmy Porter team in Look Back in Anger, once told me that the Young Vic was essentially a surrogate Dunlop family. I saw the truth of this a few years ago when I received a call from him inviting me to a tea party in Soho to celebrate the important anniversary of the Young Vic. Around the table were the original members of the company including Ronald Pickup, Andrew Robertson, Cleo Sylvester, Anna Carteret and Annabelle Levinton. People were getting up quite spontaneously and telling stories about the Young Vic in its early days. Ron Pickup, who played Oedipus, remembers that Olivier came to see him and told him afterwards: “Ron, you are a very promising young actor playing the title role in one of the greatest plays in world drama in the most beautiful new theater in London. So why couldn’t I understand a word you were saying?” When Ron told this self-deprecating story, Frank laughed in the corner like a doting father.

Dunlop continued to run the Edinburgh Festival from 1984 to 1991, completely changing its character. Under previous directors, drama had always been a poor relation to classical music and opera, but Frank reversed the roles. He brought us a series of international theater seasons including visits from Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda from Poland, Victor Garcia from Spain, and Manfred Wickwirth and Joachim Tenchert from Germany. But perhaps his greatest achievement, with the help of Thelma Holt, was to introduce the Japanese master Yukio Ninagawa to the British public. I still rank Cherry Blossom Macbeth as one of the most beautiful productions I have ever seen, but it was followed by equally stunning Ninagawa productions of Medea, The Tempest and a contemporary play, Tango at the End of Winter.

Dunlop was more diplomatic with visiting companies than with local politicians, and angered the council when the idea of ​​alternating the festival between Glasgow and Edinburgh was seriously mooted. But to the journalist, it was always good copy – especially when he pointed out publicly that fringe had become “arrogant and self-satisfied.”

Because he was so innovative, one forgets that he was also a very good director, and two of his productions reveal his ability to distill great performances into being. In 1971, while working at the National Theater Company at the Old Vic, he directed Karl Zuckmayer’s picaresque tale ‘Captain Köpenick’, which shows an ex-prisoner who takes on a new personality the moment he dons a soldier’s uniform. The play got a fine performance from Paul Scofield, whose wobbly knees looked as if they could barely bear the fragile burden they were being asked to carry, but it was Dunlop who provided the basic framework.

In 1974, John Wood gave a similarly masterful performance in the RSC play Sherlock Holmes, but once again it was Dunlop who captured the gritty theatrical power of William Gillett’s adaptation of Conan Doyle.

There have been many other facets to Dunlop’s diverse career: he was the original director of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the creator of pop theater who gave him The Winter’s Tale and The Trojan Women, the man who turned Jim Dale into a Broadway star in Scapino, and who later directed Delphine Seyrage in Antony and Cleopatra. Because of his restless energy and reluctance to stay too long in one place – like a modern-day Tyrone Guthrie – Dunlop was undervalued, but only for creating the Young Vic would he claim a permanent place in theatrical history.