Jamie Lloyd

In 2020, Lloyd was named the 9th most influential person in British Theatre in the prestigious Stage 100 list. He was the highest placed director on the list.

He has been credited with drawing new people to the theatre and introducing plays to a wholly diverse audience. He is a proponent of affordable theatre for young and diverse audiences, and has been praised as "redefining West End theatre". The Daily Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish wrote of Lloyd, "Few directors have Lloyd’s ability to transport us to the upper echelons of theatrical pleasure."

Lloyd's first main house production was Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Sheffield Crucible, which started a fruitful relationship with the playwright. Lloyd has been heralded as a major Pinter interpreter and later in his career, he directed Pinter's The Hothouse and The Homecoming.

In 2019, Lloyd announced that he would be directing and producing a season of three plays at the Playhouse Theatre with The Jamie Lloyd Company. The season consisted of Cyrano de Bergerac with James McAvoy in a new version by Martin Crimp, The Seagull starring Emilia Clarke in a version by Anya Reiss, and A Doll's House starring Jessica Chastain. His production of Cyrano de Bergerac earned five Olivier Award nominations, including one for Best Director for Lloyd, Best Actor for McAvoy, and Best Revival. He also won the Critic's Circle Award jointly for his productions of Betrayal, Evita and Cyrano. Cyrano also transferred to New York in 2020, in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. As part of the Playhouse Season, the Jamie Lloyd Company committed to a wide-ranging outreach programme, giving 15,000 tickets away for free to each production to first time theatre goers, and with a further 15,000 £15 seats to young and low-income audience members, with Lloyd stating “Every day, we talk about making theatre more accessible to absolutely everyone, but, inspired by free museum and gallery entry, I believe that true and meaningful access actually means free tickets. I hope that this inspires other theatre companies and producers to investigate similar schemes in the future, changing the landscape of West End theatre forever.”

The Pinter At The Pinter season culminated with a revival of Betrayal starring Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton, and Charlie Cox. The production received rave reviews with critic Matt Wolf remarking that the production "represents a benchmark achievement for everyone involved, and shows Pinter’s 1978 play in a revealing, even radical, new light." This production transferred to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway for 16 weeks in August 2019.

In 2018, Lloyd announced 'Pinter at the Pinter' a revolutionary sixth month long season of all of Harold Pinter's one act and short plays staged on the tenth anniversary of his death at The Harold Pinter Theatre. In the season, Lloyd directed: One For The Road; A New World Order; Mountain Language; the newly discovered The Pres and the Officer; The Lover; The Collection; Landscape; A Kind of Alaska; Monologue; Party Time; Celebration; The Dumb Waiter; and A Slight Ache, amongst many of Pinter's poems and speeches. Alongside Lloyd, Patrick Marber, Lia Williams and Lyndsey Turner directed some of the featured productions. Casting across the season included Martin Freeman, Danny Dyer, Jessica Barden, David Suchet, Russell Tovey, Lee Evans, John Simm, Phil Davis, Rupert Graves, Celia Imrie, Tamsin Greig, Jane Horrocks, Gary Kemp, John Heffernan (actor), Gemma Whelan, Tracy Ann Oberman, Kate O'Flynn, Mark Rylance, Antony Sher, Hayley Squires, Meera Syal, Penelope Wilton, and Michael Gambon.

In 2015, Lloyd directed Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. The following year he directed a new adaptation of The Maids by Jean Genet, starring Uzo Aduba, Zawe Ashton, and Laura Carmichael, both at Trafalgar Studios. This was followed by a controversial production of Doctor Faustus in the Duke of York’s Theatre starring Kit Harington and Jenna Russell. Every ticket for Monday performances of The Jamie Lloyd Company were priced at £15.

The first season featured three productions: a revival of The Pride (which also went on a short UK tour), The Hothouse starring Simon Russell Beale and John Simm, and Macbeth, starring James McAvoy, which received an Olivier nomination for Best Revival. A second Trafalgar Transformed season opened in July 2014 with Richard III starring Martin Freeman, East is East, and The Ruling Class, again starring James McAvoy.

In 2014, Lloyd was named the 20th Most Powerful Person in British Theatre by The Stage in its annual Stage 100 list. He was the youngest director to break into the list since Sam Mendes.

In 2013, the Jamie Lloyd Company was launched with the Ambassador Theatre Group. With this company, he presented a season of work in 2013 as Artistic Director called Trafalgar Transformed at Trafalgar Studios. The auditorium was reconfigured to accommodate the season, including raising the stage by over two metres.

Lloyd has had successes ranging from classical plays to modern musicals. In 2012 Lloyd directed a critically acclaimed, 'turbo-charged' production of She Stoops to Conquer at the National Theatre, and The Duchess of Malfi at The Old Vic starring Eve Best. In 2013 he directed The Commitments in the Palace Theatre, West End (which then went on a UK Tour), followed by Urinetown at the St. James Theatre, which transferred to the Apollo Theatre in the West End. Lloyd directed the musical Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2014 and was nominated for the Evening Standard award for Best Director. He directed a production of Evita in Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2019, which received two Olivier Award nominations, including one for Best Musical Revival. This production also won Lloyd the Whatsonstage Award for Best Director and transferred to the Barbican Theatre in 2019.

Lloyd has worked frequently with McAvoy since 2009, a relationship that began with a production of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain at the Apollo Theatre. More recently, McAvoy starred in a radio version of Heart of Darkness, which Lloyd directed and adapted for BBC Radio 4. He completed a run of Cyrano de Bergerac with Lloyd in February 2020.

He directed a Pinter double-bill in the West End - The Lover and The Collection - in 2008 before Michael Grandage appointed him as an Associate Director of the Donmar Warehouse.

Lloyd was the Associate Director of the Donmar Warehouse from 2008 to 2011, where his 2010 production of Passion won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical. He was also an Associate Artist at theatre company Headlong. for whom he directed an anarchic production of Oscar Wilde's Salome

In 2008 he directed The Pride at the Royal Court, for which he won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. Seen as a 'wunderkind of London theatre', he was named a Rising Star by the Daily Telegraph in 2009.

Jamie Lloyd (born 1980) is a British director, best known for his work with his eponymous theatre company (The Jamie Lloyd Company).