A.R. Whatmore

[close] A.R. Whatmore (1889 – 1960) was an English actor, playwright and producer of plays.

Whatmore's first appearance on stage was as Lord Monkhurst in Milestones (Bennett/Knoblock) at the Kennington Theatre, London in 1913. He played under Vedrenne and Eadie management for two tours of Milestones and the first tour of The Man Who Stayed at Home. He also toured with Lewis Waller in The Three Musketeers, Monsieur Beaucaire etc. During the Great War he served in France from, 1915 to 1919.

After leaving the army Whatmore spent some time in producing for Amateur Operatic Societies. Following a visit to the Hull Operatic Society in December 1923 he recognised the city's potential for repertory and the following year founded the Hull Repertory Theatre. He booked the Lecture Hall of the Assembly Rooms in Kingston Square and opened on 13 September 1924 for a four-week season of modern plays, having gathered a core of professional actors supplemented by local amateurs. The rooms soon became known as the Little Theatre. He produced eighty-one plays there over the next 6 years. In 1929 the theatre was rebuilt under his supervision and reopened in September. The following January, there was a serious fire and it had to close. After significant repairs, it reopened two months later.

Returning to London in July 1930 he produced The Macropulos Secret at the Arts Theatre. He was director of the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage, London, in partnership with Alec L. Rea, from September 1930 to March 1932. At the Embassy he produced over thirty plays, including The Liar, The Witch, Precious Bane, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, Britannia of Billingsgate and Romeo and Juliet.

During the rest of the 1930s he directed or acted in numerous plays in the West End, including a production of his own play Mother Knows Best (1939). He appeared in the film Eliza Comes to Stay (1936) and in the TV films The White Chateau (1938), Charley's Aunt (1938) and Rake's Progress (1939).

In 1940 Whatmore did a season at His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen, where he directed A.R. Whatmore's London Players in a set of eight plays. Then in 1942 he became director of the Dundee Repertory Theatre. After the war he wrote several more plays, namely She Wanted a Cream Front Door (1946), Rehearsal 1030 (1949), The Sun and I (1949) and Count Your Blessings (1950). From 1951 to 1953 he was the director of the Ipswich Repertory Theatre.