by Mike Bradwell, who died at the age of 76, was one of the most violent masters of the innovative script for the stage, founder of the Hull Truck Theater Company and later as the artistic director of the Bush Theater in West London.
When Bradwell retired from the Bush in 2007, the theater critic of the daily telegraph, Charles Spencer, praised his administration of “this tiny power plant of new script over a terrible pub on Shepherd’s Bush Green”.
“Bradwell is one of these rare people who really deserve the nickname Falstaffian,” said Spencer. “It is generous, with a glass with a somewhat restorative restaurant, which is usually close to the hand, and is an extravagant, bearded figure that somehow manages to wear zebra-skin crap shoes and gaudy drape horses without looking a total pratt. [But] What is unexpected in such an extroverted personality is the selflessness and sensitivity of his work. “
Bradwell was appointed in 1996 to lead the Bush, and seemed to embody the theater’s ethos and combine radical experimentalism with a sense of fun.
“The theater has to disturbing, provocative, insulting – but also entertaining,” he said. The main difference between the Bush and the Royal Court, Londons of other leading theatrical kindergarten of the emerging writers, was that “the royal dish is not joking”.
In the 1970s, he had refined his theater style in the 1970s as founder of Hull Truck, a peripatetic troop that specializes in corporate exhibitions, as the founder of Hull Truck, which specializes in experimental theater as possible. The playwright Richard Bean remembered that it was demanding to be a member of the company: “He would have them made a children’s show in the morning, a piece at 7.30 a.m. and then a cabaret in the night in a pub, and they would not be paid.”
Hull Truck continues to thrive and has attributed a cultural revival to the city. According to Bean: “Without Mike in 1971, I don’t think Hull 2017 City of Culture would have been.”
Michael John Bradwell was born on June 14, 1948 and grew up on the farm by his father Frederick in Epworth, a village near Scunhorpe. His mother Olive, born Johnson, worked at the box office of the Civic Theater in Darlington.
His sister Christine was interested in dancing and the young Mike also had to take lessons. Those who knew the bulky figure in later life – he was once described by the playwright Dusty Hughes as a “polar bear with halitose” – were amazed at the image of him, which danced at the age of eight alongside the future ballerina Marguerite Porter. In 1991 he wrote and staged Happy Feet, a nostalgic film for the BBC about children’s dance competitions.
After getting in at the Canford School, Dorset, he applied for as a stage hand in the Theater Royal Lincoln, “because you could clearly see many girls without clothing”.
He studied at the East 15 Drama School in Essex and then competed in the Ken Campbell Roadshow, the Madcap Touring Group, known for “Officeating Queen Victoria and singing rude songs”. He also appeared as a fire-eating and underwater eskapologist, with his co-star Bob Hoskins being responsible for integrating him so that he can free himself to free himself.
In East 15 he had made friends with Mike Leigh, who took a director’s course. Bradwell delivered an unforgettable performance when the Shambling Hippie Norman in Leigh’s first feature film, Bleak moments (1971), in Leigh’s first feature film. Although the couple were planning to find a theater group together, Leigh was too busy with film and television work, and Bradwell decided to go to Hull Solo: “I thought it seemed one of the least probable places in the universe to found a theater company. Oh, and it was cheap.”
Among the dozens of pieces that Bradwell directed for Hull Truck, which were originally operated from a damp squat, was the fosdyke -saga, Alan Plater’s adaptation of Bill Tidy’s magnificent north comic strip: “The cast threw the audience on the audience and the people came several times to throw back tripe,” recalled Bradwell.
Another piece, the knowledge, was staged in Manchester, but was banned because of obscenity; There was a berth in London in the Bush that started Bradwell’s long cooperation with the theater. Kenneth Tynan asked him to try to bring his work in the west end in the lead.
Bradwell left Hull Truck in 1981 when the company was finally housed in its own constant theater. In London he did not find his feet as deputy director at the Royal Court and worked as a freelancer until he was appointed to guide the bush.
The Glee Club, Richard Cameron’s Musical, was one of its most successful productions in a working men’s club from the 1960s that went over to the west end. Jack Thorne is when you heal me; And Tim Fountains Monologue Resident Alien, performed by Bette Bourne in the person of Quentin Crisp.
One of his favorite dramatists was Catherine Johnson, and once he persuaded her to accompany him to see the Aching Bay City Rollers – one of his unlikely enthusiasm – on a resuscitation night of the 1970s at Butlin’s in Bognor Regis. This sowed the seeds for their musical piece Shang-A-Lang, which was staged in the Bush in 1998. Due to the strength, she was commissioned to write the HIT ABBA Musical Mamma Mia!
After leaving Bradwell the Bush, he headed the game of DC Moores The Empire at the Royal Court in 2010 – the production was nominated for an Olivier Award – and returned to Hull Truck for the first time in 2013 and headed Tim Fountains Queen of the Nil.
In 2010 he published an exuberant autobiography, the reluctant escapist, and in 2019 a guide to developing and directing stage games that invent the truth.
Mike Bradwell is survived by his partner, actress and playwright Helen Cooper and her daughter.
Mike Bradwell, born on June 14, 1948, died on April 7, 2025
