When Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats unexpectedly grew to become a possible worldwide hit in 1981, the producer Cameron Waterproof coat referred to as in Martin McCallum, who ran an unbiased manufacturing firm, to organise his workplace.
McCallum, who has died aged 73, did greater than that. He collaborated within the administration of Waterproof coat’s abroad operations and places of work in Australia and New York, and labored intently with him on restoring and refurbishing the primary two of Waterproof coat’s eight West Finish theatres, the Prince Edward and the Prince of Wales, earlier than he went his personal manner in 2003.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, he was a really large a part of the success of Waterproof coat’s 4 largest reveals: Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon. Waterproof coat mentioned: “My firms’ ongoing success is in no small half because of the enduring foundations Martin laid so correctly within the Nineteen Eighties and 90s.”
On Cats, Waterproof coat introduced in McCallum as a guide to assist him restructure the corporate to accommodate the worldwide rollout. The manufacturing facet wanted beefing up and he steered that Waterproof coat relocate Nick Allott from the New London, the place he was Waterproof coat’s theatre supervisor on Cats, to his then places of work above the Fortune theatre; Allott grew to become McCallum’s successor as Waterproof coat’s righthand man and remained so till he retired from the fray in 2023. Allott acknowledged how McCallum, importantly, had discovered methods of financing US excursions and making them work effectively.
Whereas with Waterproof coat, Martin was a proactive president of Solt, the Society of London Theatres, initiating a major report that studied the financial affect of the West Finish theatre, and his time with the Donmar Warehouse (on the board 1992–2008, and its chair 1996-2004), proved to be a vital and thrilling interval, because the venue was launched as an unbiased producing theatre beneath the creative directorship of Sam Mendes.
He additionally helped Robert Noble finance Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures dance firm when it was based in 2001.
McCallum had labored in regional repertory theatres, and in 1971 joined Laurence Olivier and the Nationwide Theatre on the Outdated Vic. As manufacturing supervisor, he already had a powerful report of expertise, and he supervised the technical and sensible switch to the brand new South Financial institution constructing in 1976.
He co-founded his firm, the Manufacturing Workplace, with Richard Bullimore in 1978, the yr of the manufacturing of Evita
that introduced him a particular friendship with the nice US director Hal Prince, and a familiarity with the Prince Edward that made him particularly properly certified to supervise the difference of that theatre required by Waterproof coat. His technical and sensible information of working in theatre buildings was equal to that of any theatre architect, and essential to Waterproof coat’s mission.
Born in Blackpool, Lancashire, Martin was the son of Jessie (nee Lamb) and Raymond Higgins, a greengrocer. The household, along with his older sister Barbara, moved south from Manchester to Farnham in Surrey, the place he was educated at Frensham Heights, a progressive faculty with a particular bias within the arts, and Guildford Technical School.
His first job, on the Farnham rep as an assistant stage supervisor in 1967, paid him £1 per week. It might have been £100 so far as his father was involved, who dubbed all “arts individuals” ne’er-do-wells.
At Farnham, the place he additionally performed small elements, he modified his surname to McCallum due to Fairness guidelines and, because the community of rep theatres disintegrated within the late Sixties, he ended up lighting and designing reveals.
Waterproof coat acquired the Prince Edward – and the Prince of Wales – theatres from Bernard Delfont in 1991 and as McCallum, now working for Waterproof coat, had “introduced again” the Prince Edward (which had been a cinema and a range home often called the London On line casino) for the producer Robert Stigwood on Evita, he was properly primed in what was required within the refurbishment.
The mission grew to become an architectural rebuild, with McCallum working intently with the architect Nick Thompson on enhancing the auditorium by linking the degrees with new slips (facet seats) and packing containers, lowering the ungainly width and creating extra alternatives for adornment. It was – and stays – a masterpiece of renovation, and one of many nice new homes for musical theatre in London.
The Prince Edward and Prince of Wales had been Nineteen Thirties artwork deco buildings. McCallum was concerned within the restoration of the Prince of Wales to the extent of drawing on his involvement in two German theatre initiatives in Stuttgart and Duisburg, which featured the intervention of flying packing containers and loge seats in two modernist, featureless halls, and the usage of metallic and mesh that would enliven the field fronts when appropriately lit.
The work within the German theatres was achieved as a result of, within the mid-Nineties, Waterproof coat was producing in them that nation’s premieres of Miss Saigon and Les Misérables. He needed them to have the improved intimacy of the Prince Edward, which had been accomplished in two phases by the point Mary Poppins opened in 2004, and the plans for linking the auditorium to the stage in a system of packing containers and auditorium changes within the Prince of Wales, which was accomplished in the identical yr. So, in a way, the plan for his first two London theatres as an proprietor was previewed in two German homes that wanted to be remodelled as congenial, sympathetic theatres.
Whereas supervising a tour of Cats in Australia, Martin met his third spouse, Mary Ann Rolfe, a theatre publicist. They married in 1989 and, after the skilled separation from Waterproof coat in 2003, he moved completely to Sydney, the place he designed and constructed his personal home on Palm Seaside. He additionally created a country retreat on the mountainside within the village of Tilba Tilba on the south coast. Although he served on the board of the Sydney Theatre Firm (2005-14), he grew to become extra taken up with the pure world.
McCallum’s three marriages led to divorce. In 1971 he married the actor Lesley Nunnerley, and so they had two kids, Toby and Sophie. In 1986 he married Julie Edmett, a dancer within the authentic Cats, and so they had a daughter, Amy. With Rolfe he had two sons, Gabriel and Fabian; they divorced in 2005. He’s survived by his associate of the final decade, Gwynne Jones, a yoga instructor, and his kids.
