Bill Kenwright, British Theater Impresario and Film Producer, Dies at 78
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Bill Kenwright, the prolific West End producer behind the hit musicals Blood Brothers, Whistle Down the Wind and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat who would later go on to become an owner and chairman of his boyhood soccer club Everton, has died. He was 78.
In a statement, Everton said Kenwright died peacefully, “surrounded by his family and loved ones.” This month, the Premier League club revealed that Kenwright had recently undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his liver.
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“The world of British theatre without Bill Kenwright seems impossible,” said fellow theater impresario Cameron Mackintosh in a statement on X. “In my lifetime, there has never been anyone like Bill. He’s totally irreplaceable, and we will miss him so.”
“Dearest Bill, Somewhere you’ll be singing Let It Be Me and challenging heavenly choirs to look into your Ebony Eyes,” Andrew Lloyd Webber tweeted. “The theatre will miss you and never forget you.”
“Like many grateful actors, I am in debt to Bill Kenwright for employment,” Ian McKellen said in a statement on X. “He seemed to have known everyone in the business and to care about them. Yet every chat would veer round to his equal passion — Everton.”
With a string of hits on the London stage, Kenwright was in the first rank of British theater producers and was involved with Blood Brothers, Cabaret, The Wizard of Oz, Evita, Jekyll & Hyde, Fame and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Born in Liverpool, England, on Sept. 4, 1945, Kenwright entered the entertainment industry as an actor. He had a starring role in the long-running ITV soap Coronation Street, playing the character of Gordon Clegg since April 1968. He left the show the following year to pursue a career as a producer but periodically made cameo appearances on Coronation Street over the next five decades, the last time in 2012.
Turning to theater production, Kenwright made his name by producing new productions of existing musicals. He found great success with his production of Willy Russell’s Liverpool-set Blood Brothers in 1987. The production would become an enduring hit, running in the West End for 24 years, embarking on several national and international tours and transferring to Broadway.
Kenwright also produced Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, another production that would go on to become a long-running national and international touring hit.
Among the notable U.K. theater productions Kenwright produced included The Shawshank Redemption, The Exorcist, Festen, Saturday Night Fever, The Sound of Music, Heathers, Foxfinder, Twelve Angry Men, A Few Good Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and The Crucible.
On Broadway, Kenwright produced Travels With My Aunt (which won a Drama Desk Award) and Tony Award winners Dancing at Lughnasa, Medea and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and the Tony-nominated House Théâtre de Complicite’s The Chairs. He also produced Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, Primo, Festen, Passing Strange and Guys and Dolls. Blood Brothers also played for three years at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre.
He would earn 10 Tony nominations over his career, winning two, first in 1992 for producing Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa and in 1997 for a revival of A Doll’s House.
Kenwright also directed many plays and musicals. As a director, he was nominated for a London Theatre Critics’ Award for West Side Story and a Tony for Blood Brothers.
In a theater career that spanned more than six decades, Kenwright became a dominant figure in the U.K. alongside his contemporaries Paul Elliott, Duncan Weldon and Cameron Mackintosh. In all, he produced more than 500 West End, Broadway, national and international touring theater productions.
Kenwright’s first foray into producing films came with Lewis Gilbert’s Stepping Out (1991). The film starred Liza Minnelli and Julie Walters, and the latter was nominated for a BAFTA film award in the best supporting actress category.
The Kenwright-produced drama My Pure Land (2017), an Urdu-language feature directed by Sarmad Masud, was the U.K.’s submission for the best foreign language Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards.
Kenwright’s other movie producing credits included My Night With Reg (2021), Off the Rails (2021), The Fanatic (2019), Burden (2018), Peripheral (2018), Another Mother’s Son (2017), The Hope Rooms (2016), Broken (2012), Chéri (2009), Die, Mommie, Die! (2003), Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (1999) and the 1986 TV movie Day After the Fair.
In 2008, Kenwright received the lifetime achievement award from the U.K.’s Theatrical Management Association, and he was awarded a CBE for his services to film and theater in 2001.
A lifelong fan of Everton, he joined the club’s board in 1989, at various times had an ownership stake and eventually became club chairman in 2004, remaining in the role until his death.
He is survived by his partner, the actress Jenny Seagrove, his daughter, Lucy, and his two grandchildren.
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