Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, the joint Chief Executives of Ambassador Theatre Group, have been named at the top of The Stage’s annual list of UK theatre’s most influential people for the sixth year in a row.
In doing so they have broken Andrew Lloyd Webber’s record of five consecutive years at number one. The composer and impresario sits in fifth position in 2015, below the ATG team, Delfont Mackintosh duo Cameron Mackintosh and Nicholas Allott, producer Sonia Friedman and the outgoing National Theatre partnership of Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr.
The top ten is completed by four more Artistic/Executive Director combinations and a team of architects.
The Young Vic’s David Lan and Lucy Woollatt sit at six, above Shakespeare’s Globe’s Dominic Dromgoole and Neil Constable at seven, Chichester Festival Theatre’s Jonathan Church and Alan Finch at eight and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Gregory Doran and Catherine Mallyon at nine.
The final position in the top 10 goes to architects Steve Tompkins and Graham Haworth of Haworth Tompkins, who have recently worked on the Chichester Festival Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse’s new Dryden Street rehearsal and education space, the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and the National Theatre’s Temporary Theatre and redevelopment.
The annual list of UK theatre’s most prominent movers and shakers, compiled by entertainment industry newspaper The Stage, is now in its 19th year.