Frank Dunlop, Founder of the Young Vic and Former BAM Director, Dies at 98

Frank Dunlop, the British theater director who founded the Young Vic and later led the Brooklyn Academy of Music Theater Company, died on Jan. 4 in Manhattan. He was 98. His death in a hospital was from complications of a stroke, his friend Julie Nives said. Mr. Dunlop established the Young Vic in 1970 under the aegis of Laurence Olivier.

He described the company as a “paperback theater,” shorn of traditional class distinctions and focused on daring, unorthodox productions for young adults; the house had fewer than 500 seats and offered teen-friendly prices. In a 1969 interview he called the space “a kind of open university of the arts,” and the rock group the Who tested material there in the spring of 1971.

His early Young Vic hit was a 1970 production of Scapino, noted for irreverence and offbeat staging, and his work there included productions of Waiting for Godot, French Without Tears and an early Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He continued directing for other companies, guiding a 1974 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Sherlock Holmes to Broadway, and from 1976 to 1978 served as director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music Theater Company, bringing several of his Young Vic productions to Downtown Brooklyn.

Born Feb. 15, 1927, in Leeds, Mr. Dunlop was educated at Kibworth Beauchamp Grammar School, served in the Royal Air Force and studied English literature at University College London.

Key Topics

Culture, Frank Dunlop, Young Vic, Bam, Laurence Olivier, The Who