Hugh Wooldridge


Hugh Wooldridge is an English theatre director, theatre and television producer and writer, and stage lighting designer. Wooldridge was born in Amersham, Bucks, the son of British composer John Wooldridge and actress Margaretta Scott. He is the brother of actress Susan Wooldridge. Wooldridge currently specialises in large productions, often at the Royal Albert Hall, London. He also teaches, gives master-classes and runs workshops.

Early career

Wooldridge trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, then assisted directors such as Alan Ayckbourn, Eric Thompson, Frank Hauser and Michael Blakemore. He directed his first play at the age of seventeen. In the first ten years of his career he directed more than sixty productions in London and throughout the UK, by authors including Alan Ayckbourn, Rene de Obaldia, Pam Gems and Athol Fugard. He was a resident director at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead, and The Old Vic, London.
During the next ten years Wooldridge ran his own multi-media company, The Jolly Good Production Company, which produced plays and TV programmes, managed artistes and published books. During this time he was also responsible for music programmes and programming in the ITV network in the south and south east of England. He also directed international tours of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show, as well as national tours of plays by Noël Coward, Daphne du Maurier and Dylan Thomas.

Recent work

Each year since 1999 Wooldridge has produced, devised and directed The Night of 1000 Voices at the Royal Albert Hall. The production has featured amongst others Michael Ball, Brent Barrett, Len Cariou, Glenn Close, Michael Crawford, Kerry Ellis, David Essex, Maria Friedman, Joel Grey, Brian May, Caroline O'Connor, Adam Pascal, Philip Quast, and Sally Ann Triplett, and the works of Cy Coleman, George and Ira Gershwin, Lerner and Lowe, Tim Rice, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, Stephen Sondheim, and songs from the productions of Richard Eyre, Nicholas Hytner, Cameron Mackintosh, Trevor Nunn, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Recent productions at the Royal Albert Hall:
Wooldridge recently directed the play The Haunting, based on stories by Charles Dickens, on three Bill Kenwright Ltd tours of the UK.
In 2011/2 Hugh Wooldridge was the Beatrice Carr and Ray Wallace Visiting Professor at A. Max Weitzenhoffer College of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma, where he directed the revival of his 1989 production, The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.