The maverick behind Tom Holland’s Romeo and Nicole Scherzinger’s Sunset Boulevard is now stunning passersby with Rachel Zegler’s Palladium balcony scene
Rarely can a balcony have caused such a kerfuffle. But the row about the extramural staging of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina in Evita at the London Palladium is a sign of its director’s increasing celebrity status. Indeed I’m tempted to rephrase a number from an earlier Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical: “Jamie Lloyd Superstar, Do you think you’re what they say you are?” What, in short, does it tell us about our theatrical culture that this puckishly likable director has become a figure famed on both sides of the Atlantic?
His beginnings, as a recent Vogue feature pointed out, were relatively modest. He grew up in rural Dorset, was turned on to live theatre by seeing Michael Jackson on tour and attended the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. But, right from the start, there was something there. The first production of his that I saw was The Caretaker, which in 2007 transferred from the Sheffield Crucible to what was then the Tricycle in London. Two things made it original: the use of a creepy score by Ben and Max Ringham to give the play a film noir feel and the insistent presence of Nigel Harman’s Mick reminding us that the work is about the fraternal bond between him and the brain-damaged Aston, which Pinter’s intrusive hobo fails to understand.
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