Patrick Garland

The first was Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On (Apollo), starring John Gielgud as an irascible public school headmaster whose pupils present an end-of-term revue, and reflecting on changing British attitudes after the Great War. The second was the one-man show Brief Lives (Hampstead Theatre Club and Criterion), with Roy Dotrice as the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey looking back on his run-down London life.

By this time Garland had already embarked on a successful career as a director and interviewer in arts programmes for BBC Television. But the reception of Forty Years On and Brief Lives persuaded him that the theatre was ultimately where his future lay.

He went on to stage a wide range of drama — Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, musical comedy and revue — and is the only director to have had four plays running in the West End of London at the same time. In the mid-Seventies he directed Michael Crawford in the musical Billy at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; and in the early 1980s he directed the revival of My Fair Lady on Broadway, with Rex Harrison (about whom he wrote a successful book, The Incomparable Rex).

But it was perhaps Garland’s staging of one-man shows and dramatic recitals that set him apart. In that genre his best-known productions after Brief Lives included Beecham (1980); Kipling (Mermaid and New York, 1984); A Room of One’s Own (Hampstead, 1989); and Vita and Virginia (Chichester and Ambassadors, 1993).

A gentle, considerate and courteous director, Garland always tried to spare the feelings of those with whom he worked, and conceded that he could sometimes be “a bit circuitous” in his kindly criticism: “Actors are generally very vulnerable and sensitive. There are ways of saying things and getting through to people. I think tact is very important... I’ve never been the least bit impressed by people who pride themselves on telling you outright what they think. Candour is an unlikeable moral virtue.”

Patrick Ewart Garland was born on April 10 1935 and educated at St Mary’s College, Southampton, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was president of the university dramatic society . He then spent two years acting with the Bristol Old Vic before moving to Paris, where he wrote two plays for television — The Hard Case and Flow Gently, Sweet Afton (1962) — and decided to abandon acting. He worked under Huw Wheldon at the BBC’s arts programme Monitor, the start of 12 years as a producer and director with the Corporation’s Arts Department during which time he interviewed figures such as Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Sir Noël Coward, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Ninette de Valois and Marcel Marceau .

At the same time, Garland was building his career in theatre, with productions including Cyrano (National Theatre, 1970); Alan Bennett’s Getting On (Queen’s, 1971); Hair (Israel, 1972); A Doll’s House (New York and London, 1975); and An Enemy of the People (Chichester, 1975).

As Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre from 1980 to 1984 and from 1991 to 1994, he staged The Mitford Girls, Goodbye Mr Chips, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Pickwick and Pygmalion, among many other productions.

Garland also directed films, including The Snow Goose (1971, starring Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter), which won a Golden Globe for best television movie.

As part of the celebrations for the Queen’s 60th birthday in 1986, he directed Fanfare for Elizabeth at Covent Garden, and in 1989 he masterminded the thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Olivier.

Garland was the author of a novel, The Wings of the Morning (1989), and also published poetry. He started the Poetry International foundation in 1963 with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne.

Patrick Garland married, in 1980, the actress Alexandra Bastedo, who survives him.

Patrick Garland, born April 10 1935, died April 20 2013