David Gilmore has directed more than a dozen West End productions. These include the original award-winning production of Daisy Pulls It Off which ran for three years at the Globe Theatre, Lend Me a Tenor also at the Globe, and the award-winning musical The Hired Man by Melvyn Bragg and Howard Goodall, all produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
His production of Grease ran for seven years at the Dominion and Cambridge Theatres before returning to the Victoria Palace. It has also played in many European and Asian cities. He has worked frequently in Australia where he recently directed the musical Footloose in Sydney and staged Jamie Oliver’s hugely successful performances in both England and Australia.
His production of Happy Days opened at the Olympic Superdome in Sydney while his production of La Haut, a French comedy operetta, which he originally directed for the Theatre des Celestins in Lyon, completed a season at the Theatre de Varietes in Paris and has subsequently been filmed for French television.
His production of Defending the Cavemen at the Apollo Theatre won an Olivier award for Best Entertainment. Other productions abroad include As You Like It for the Shakespeare Repertory Company in Chicago; David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross at the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide; the American comedy, Alone Together and Ben Elton’s Gasping which visited Hong Kong and Peking.
Other West End productions include the long-running hit Beyond Reasonable Doubt at the Queen’s Theatre starring Frank Finlay, Chapter Two by Neil Simon, at the Gielgud Theatre starring Tom Conti and Sharon Gless, Radio Times starring Tony Slattery and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui starring Gryff Rhys Jones, both at the Queen’s Theatre, the American courtroom drama Nuts at the Whitehall Theatre, Annie Get Your Gun starring Suzi Quatro at the Aldwych, the Cole Porter revue A Swell Party at the Vaudeville, Out of the Blue at the Shaftsbury Theatre and Fatal Attraction at the Haymarket. He also directed the farewell tour of the band Harvey and the Wallbangers. At the King’s Head Theatre he directed Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart.
At the National Theatre he directed Machiavelli’s Mandragola and for Compass Theatre he directed Sir Antony Quayle in Pinero’s Dandy Tale Dick. For the New Shakespeare Company he directed The Winter’s Tale; and for the Chichester Festival Theatre, Noël Coward’s Cavalcade with a cast of over 200.
As Artistic Director of the Nuffield Theatre at Southampton he directed The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Candida by Shaw, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Brecht; Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams and productions by authors such as Rattigan, Coward, Frayn, Wedekind and Christopher Hampton, in addition to half a dozen musicals. He also adapted De Rojas’ Celestina for the stage.