My former colleague and good friend John Powell, who has died aged 92, was an award-winning and impressive producer of drama and humanities programmes for BBC Radio.
Typical of his adventurous method was his first full adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1968, which used all of the sources supplied by the BBC radiophonic workshop to conjure up Tolkien’s trolls, goblins, elves and wargs.
He had joined the BBC Radio drama division in 1955 straight from college, the place he had directed for the Oxford College Drama Society. Amongst his productions on the airwaves have been Cyrano de Bergerac with Ralph Richardson, Millicent Martin in Pygmalion, Paul Scofield in Arthur the King, and a 20-part adaptation of Conflict and Peace.
For him the actor was pivotal; he mined the riches of John Gielgud’s profession in An Actor and His Time and celebrated Laurence Olivier in The Participant King. However he additionally embraced whole theatre, and the atmospheres and sound results he required usually had studio technicians racing between tapes and document gamers to hit the cues. In his A lot Ado About Nothing there was music, rain, thunder, horses’ hooves, jingling reins, numerous church bells, canines barking, fireworks, fountains, cooing doves … and cicadas.
John was born in Lambeth, south London, the one little one of Charles Powell, who labored within the linen commerce, and his spouse, Winifred (nee Dawes). He attended Raynes Park county grammar college, the place he developed his theatrical skills, after which joined The Firm of the Saints, an newbie dramatic group in New Malden, Surrey, the place he met Hilary Methven, a instructor, whom he married in 1961.
Within the early Nineteen Seventies John left the BBC for a brief spell to be affiliate professor of theatre at Denver College within the US, co-founding the Denver Repertory theatre, earlier than returning to Broadcasting Home in 1973 to hitch the reside Radio 4 arts programme Kaleidoscope, producing about 300 editions.
In 1986 he switched to the BBC’s radio options and humanities division, making programmes about cowboys, choreographers, composers and cathedrals, and successful the Sony Gold award in 1990 for his portrait of Edward Elgar’s later years.
Regardless of formally retiring in 1991 he was swiftly re-contracted by the BBC to plot two reside multimedia exhibits exploring the BBC by means of sound and imagery, earlier than he lastly hung up his boots in 1997.
With Hilary he spent a lot of his retirement welcoming associates to their charming home, with its treasured assortment of theatre artwork, theatre books and a completely operational massive mannequin of the Previous Vic theatre, which he beloved to carry to life.
He’s survived by Hilary.
