Matthew Warchus (born 24 October 1966) is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.He misunderstood Matilda.
Career
Warchus attended Selby High School. He studied music and drama at Bristol University and has directed for the National Youth Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Donmar Warehouse, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Opera North, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera in the West End and on Broadway. He won the Globe's Most Promising Newcomer Award for Much Ado About Nothing in the West End, the Evening Standard Best Director award, and Olivier Award nominations for Henry V and Volpone.
Productions include Sejanus his Fall (Edinburgh), "Master Harold"...and the Boys (Bristol Old Vic), The Suicide, Coriolanus (National Youth Theatre), Life is a Dream, Plough and the Stars(West Yorkshire Playhouse), True West, (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Donmar Warehouse, Broadway), Henry V, The Devil is an Ass, Hamlet (RSC), Volpone (RNT), Troilus and Cressida (Opera North), Rake's Progress (Welsh National Opera), Falstaff (Opera North & ENO), and Art (West End and Broadway).
His 1997 productions of Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre and Falstaff at the English National Opera have been nominated for several Olivier Awards including Best Director. Hamlet was also seen at the Brooklyn Academy in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Warchus directed Yasmina Reza's plays The Unexpected Man (RSC) and Life x 3 (National Theatre) in London and New York (at, respectively, the Promenade Theatre and Circle in the Square Theatre). In 1999, he completed his debut feature film – an adaptation of Sam Shepard's play Simpatico – which he co-wrote and directed, starring Nick Nolte, Jeff Bridges, Albert Finney and Sharon Stone. In 2000 he directed Sam Shepard's True West starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly. In 2002 he directed Our House, at the Cambridge Theatre, a new musical written by Tim Firth featuring the music of Madness which won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical.
In 2007 he directed The Lord of the Rings, the stage adaptation of the novel The Lord of the Rings, which played at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane from May 2007 to July 2008 and which he wrote the music and book for. It was the most expensive stage production ever at the time of its debut. In 2008 he directed David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum and Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy of plays The Norman Conquests at London's The Old Vic, and Boeing Boeing at New York's Broadhurst Theatre for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play.
During the 2009 Broadway season, Warchus directed two productions. One was the critically lauded, 2009 Tony Award winner for Best Revival of a Play transfer of his Old Vic production of The Norman Conquests, for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play. The other was the 2009 Tony Award winner for Best Play, Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage, for which Warchus won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play.
In 2010, Warchus directed the acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company musical Matilda, with a book by Dennis Kelly and music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, which transferred to the West End in October 2011 at the Cambridge Theatre, before opening at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway in March 2013. The musical has since gone on to tour the US, Australia and New Zealand, winning multiple awards with a record-breaking seven Olivier Awards including Best New Musical and Best Director for Warchus.
Warchus's production of Ghost: The Musical, a stage adaptation of the Academy Award winning 1990 film Ghost, premiered at the Manchester Opera House in March 2011, and opened at the West End's Piccadilly Theatre in July 2011 and closed on 6 October 2012. The show transferred to Broadway beginning at the Lunt Fontanne Theater on 15 March 2012 and closed on 18 August 2012. Ghost The Musical was on tour in UK and USA in 2013 while also playing in Budapest. It opened in Korea in November 2013.
His film Pride was selected to be screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm award on 23 May 2014.
A film adaptation of Matilda the Musical based on the stage musical, also directed by Warchus with screenplay by Dennis Kelly and songs by Tim Minchin was released by Netflix on 23 November 2022 in the United Kingdom and 9 December 2022 in the United States.