Name Sean Foley | Role Theatre Director | |
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Known for Theatre director, writer, actor, comedian Awards Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy Nominations Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor Similar People Hamish McColl, Eddie Braben, Graham Linehan, Kate Prince, Marcia Warren | ||
Sean Foley (born 21 November 1964) is a British director, writer, comedian and actor. Following early success as part of the comedy double act The Right Size and their long-running stage show The Play What I Wrote, Foley has more recently become a director of successful West End comedy productions.
Contents
- Early career and The Right Size
- Acting
- Leading comedy theatre director
- Olivier Awards
- Tony Awards
- Television
- Radio
- Film
- References
Early career and The Right Size
Foley and Hamish McColl formed The Right Size in 1988. They devised and performed in the shows, with regular creative team collaborators such as director Jozef Houben, designer Alice Power, and songwriter Chris Larner. Their style combined elements of clowning, physical comedy, mime, slapstick, vaudeville and variety. The Right Size's major successes were Do You Come Here Often?, about two strangers stuck in a bathroom for 25 years, and The Play What I Wrote, a tribute to Morecambe and Wise. The Right Size were active until 2006.
Acting
Foley has played some major parts in traditional scripted roles, including Freud in Hysteria by Terry Johnson at Birmingham Rep in 2007, and the single role in the film of Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words I directed by Karel Reisz. He appeared alongside Mark Rylance in I Am Shakespeare at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester in 2007. He was a member of the Oxford Youth Theatre during his time at the University of Oxford, where he studied history.
Leading comedy theatre director
Foley made his directorial debut in 2007 with Pinter's People. He then directed several stage shows by stand-up comedians including Joan Rivers, Nina Conti and Armstrong and Miller.
He achieved significant West End success in 2012, when he directed productions of The Ladykillers (for which he was nominated for the 2012 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director) and Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw. He also, with Patrick Barlow, co-directed and co-wrote a four-actor stage adaptation of Ben Hur at the Watermill Theatre, a regional English theatre.
In 2013, Foley made his Royal Shakespeare Company debut, directing Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters. The production was well received by UK critics, notably by Patrick Marmion in the Daily Mail who gave the show five stars, and in the Financial Times, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
It was announced in June 2013 that Foley would be directing Matthew MacFadyen and Stephen Mangan in a theatrical adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories, to be titled Perfect Nonsense, at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, from 30 October 2013. Foley also directed the X Factor stage musical, I Can't Sing! The X Factor Musical, which premiered in 2014.
Olivier Awards
(The Ladykillers received five nominations in total)