Tom Littler

DIRECTOR

Tom is Artistic Director and Joint Chief Executive of the Orange Tree. His first OT production was The Circle by Somerset Maugham, which starred Jane Asher, Clive Francis, Nicholas Le Prevost and Olivia Vinall. It was the best-selling show in OT history and is being remounted by Theatre Royal Bath in spring 2024. His next production is Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer starring Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds

Tom has directed over seventy productions. He has collaborated with contemporary writers including Howard Brenton, five of whose recent plays including Cancelling Socrates and The Blinding Light Tom has premiered, Lorna French, Natalie Haynes, Charlotte Jones, Hannah Khalil, Bryony Lavery, Isley Lynn, Joanna Murray-Smith, Lucy Shaw, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Alexandra Wood. Musicals include A Little Night Music (Budapest), Cabaret (Frankfurt and Munich), Saturday Night (Arts Theatre) and Anyone Can Whistle with Rosalie Craig (Jermyn Street Theatre). Shakespeare includes Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure (Cambridge Arts), The Tempest with Michael Pennington (Jermyn Street Theatre) and Hamlet with Freddie Fox (Guildford Shakespeare Company). Revivals include Noel Coward’s nine-play Tonight at 8.30 cycle and Somerset Maugham’s For Services Rendered (Jermyn Street Theatre), Keith Waterhouse’s Good Grief with Penelope Keith (Theatre Royal Bath), August Strindberg’s Dances of Death (Gate), Miss Julie and Creditors (Jermyn Street Theatre and Theatre by the Lake), Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular (Theatre Royal Windsor and national tour), Jean Jacques-Bernard's Martine (Finborough), T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford), Alan Bennett’s Single Spies (Theatre by the Lake and Theatre Royal York), and the first ever revivals of Alan Ayckbourn’s Dear Uncle (Theatre by the Lake), Charles Wood’s Jingo (Finborough), Graham Greene’s The Living Room, Terence Rattigan’s First Episode, and Dorothy L. Sayers’ Love All (Jermyn Street Theatre).

Tom’s theatre-on-screen work includes 15 Heroines, a cycle of fifteen new plays inspired by Ovid’s b, for Jermyn Street Theatre and Digital Theatre (OffWestEnd Award), starring Patsy Ferran, Martina Laird, Eleanor Tomlinson, Gemma Whelan and Olivia Williams, and marathon stagings of The Odyssey (OffWestEnd Award), starring James Purefoy and Janet Suzman.

Tom was Artistic Director and Executive Producer of Jermyn Street Theatre from 2017 to 2022, during which he won the OffWestEnd Award for Best Artistic Director, and the theatre won the Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Theatremaking in Lockdown and the Stage Award for Best Fringe Theatre. Previously, Tom was Artistic Director of Primavera, Associate Director of Theatre503, and Associate Director of the Peter Hall Company. He has nine OffWestEnd Award nominations for Best Director.

Tom trained as an assistant and associate to directors including Peter Gill, Peter Hall, and Trevor Nunn. He read English at the University of Oxford and has postgraduate degrees from the Open University and the University of Cambridge, where he subsequently taught eighteenth-century literature.