Jonathan Miller

Jonathan Miller was a British theatre and opera director, actor, author, physician, and television presenter born on 21 July 1934 in London, England, who died on 27 November 2019. He grew up in St John's Wood in a well-connected Jewish family. His father, Emanuel Miller, was a military and paediatric psychiatrist of Lithuanian descent, and his mother, Betty Miller, was a novelist and biographer originally from County Cork, Ireland. As a child, Miller developed a stammer and a talent for mimicry, and he was assessed by several child psychiatrists, including Donald Winnicott. As a teenager he had sessions with psychiatrist Leopold Stein, during which the two discussed philosophy and the neurological theories of Hughlings Jackson.

Miller attended several schools before completing his secondary education at St Paul's School in London, where he developed a lasting interest in the biological sciences. At St Paul's, at the age of twelve, he became close friends with Oliver Sacks and Eric Korn. He went on to study natural sciences and medicine at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles and appeared in the Footlights revues Out of the Blue in 1954 and Between the Lines in 1955. He qualified as a physician in 1959 and subsequently worked as a house officer at several hospitals, including the Central Middlesex Hospital, before specialising in neurology.

Miller helped write and produce the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe alongside Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore. The production premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1960 and transferred first to London and then to Broadway in 1962. His Broadway career spanned from 1962 to 1980 and included Beyond the Fringe '65 and Amadeus. In recognition of his contributions, Miller received a Tony Award Special Award in 1963. He quit Beyond the Fringe shortly after its Broadway transfer and in 1965 took over as editor and presenter of the BBC arts programme Monitor.

His first stage directing credit came in 1962 with John Osborne's Under Plain Cover. In 1964 he directed Robert Lowell's The Old Glory in New York City, the first production staged at the American Place Theatre, featuring Frank Langella, Roscoe Lee Brown, and Lester Rawlins. The production won five Obie Awards in 1965, including Best American Play. Miller also produced a National Theatre Company production of The Merchant of Venice starring Laurence Olivier and served for a time as an associate director at the National Theatre before resigning. He later ran the Old Vic Theatre.

For the BBC, Miller wrote, produced, and directed Alice in Wonderland in 1966, followed by a 1968 adaptation of M. R. James's ghost story Whistle and I'll Come to You, starring Michael Hordern. He held a research fellowship in the history of medicine at University College London from 1970 to 1973 and began directing operas for Kent Opera and Glyndebourne in 1974, followed by a new production of The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera in 1978. His opera directing work also included productions of Rigoletto in 1975 and 1982, the latter set in 1950s Little Italy, Manhattan, in a Mafia-styled staging, as well as The Mikado in 1987. In 1992, Opera Omaha staged the United States premiere of Rossini's 1819 opera Ermione under his direction.

Miller drew on his medical background as writer and presenter of the BBC television series The Body in Question in 1978, which was nominated for two BAFTAs in 1979 and generated controversy for showing the dissection of a cadaver. In 1980 he joined the BBC Television Shakespeare project, serving as a producer from 1980 to 1982 and directing six of the plays himself, beginning with a production of The Taming of the Shrew starring John Cleese. He wrote and presented the BBC series States of Mind in 1983 and that same year directed Roger Daltrey as Macheath in a BBC production of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. In 1984 he studied neuropsychology with Dr. Sandra Witelson at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, before becoming a neuropsychology research fellow at the University of Sussex the following year.

In 1990 Miller wrote and presented Born Talking, a joint BBC and Canadian production examining language acquisition, with a particular focus on sign language. He subsequently wrote and presented the television series Madness in 1991, which ran on PBS and examined the history of mental illness through interviews with researchers, clinicians, and patients, and Jonathan Miller on Reflection in 1998. Throughout his career he was also a frequent guest on PBS's Dick Cavett Show and appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, where he engaged Enoch Powell in a lengthy discussion defending multiracial immigration to the United Kingdom. He also served as chair of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe board of directors.