West End company stage manager David K Grant has died aged 89
© Left: Photo: Andreas Praefcke / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), right: Lindah Balfour
West End company stage manager David Grant passed away aged 89 last week.
Grant was attached to major shows across the decades, including the original production of Yasmina Reza's Art at the Wyndham's Theatre, Funny Turns with Victoria Wood and Geoffrey Durham at the Duchess Theatre, The Seagull with Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson and Jonathan Pryce and Home with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud.
He worked with the likes of Maggie Smith, Patricia Hodge, Michael Crawford, Edward Fox, Stephen Fry, Rik Mayall, Anita Dobson and more on an exhaustive list of shows over the decades, while also doing stints on long-running musicals including Chess and The Phantom of the Opera.
He started his career in the 50s in productions directed by John Gale, including No Sex Please We're British and Middle Age Spread. He was often known by the nickname of "Aunty Granty" or "Mother".
Grant had a lucrative working relationship with producer Cameron Mackintosh. While working on Jeeves at the Fortune Theatre, Grant invested in Mackintosh's newest upcoming project alongside Andrew Lloyd Webber – an adaptation of a collection of T S Elliot poems that became the iconic Cats.
According to fellow company stage manager Lindah Balfour: "After Jeeves had closed Cameron sent David off with a French dictionary and a video and asked him to produce a translation of a production from Paris that he was considering. The show was called Les Misérables!"
