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Phil Willmott (born 26 January 1968) is a British director, playwright, arts journalist, teacher, and founder of London based theatre production company The Steam Industry.
He was the Artistic Director of the Finborough Theatre in London's Earl's Court from 1994 to 1999.
He is also the chief theatre reviewer for the British satirical radio series Mind The Gap, and was chief critic for the online ticketing agency London Box Office until 2020.
He was an Associate Artist of London's acclaimed Battersea Arts Centre for ten years and has also been Associate Director of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford and Co-Director of the UK's leading degree course in Musical Theatre at Arts Educational Schools London where he was also Head of Acting.
In London he received a Peter Brook Award for his annual classical productions and family shows at the Scoop and numerous London Fringe Awards. In 2014 he was awarded the first ever Owle Schreame Award for innovation in historical theatre, for his production of The Ring Cycle Plays (again at the Scoop).Loxton, Howard The Owle Schreame Awards for Innovation in Classical Theatre: Gods & Monsters, "British Theatre Guide", September 19th (2014) He has also been the recipient of a Brooks Atkinson New Dramatists Award in New York.
For his own company, The Steam Industry, award-winning productions of new writing have included The Fundraisers, Fucking Men, Watch Out for Mr Stork, Venetian Heat, Born Bad and The Oedipus Table, and classics such as Crime and Punishment, The Grapes of Wrath, Trelawny of the 'Wells' and Loyalties (all at the Finborough Theatre) and Blood Wedding, Helen of Troy, Disney's Jungle Book, Petite Rouge, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Cyclops, Children of Hercules, Treasure Island, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Androcles and the Lion, and The London Nativity at the Scoop.
His other notable Steam Industry productions include Joe DiPietro's play Fucking Men which transferred from the Finborough Theatre to a box office record-breaking run Off West End at The Kings Head; Victor/Victoria, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (The Bridewell); Measure for Measure (Riverside Studios); Ring Round the Moon (King's Head); The Winter's Tale (The Courtyard Theatre); Titus Andronicus, Germaine Greer's Lysistrata, Murdered Sleep, Inherit the Wind, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Sound of Music, The King and I, Calamity Jane and Sweet Charity (all at BAC where he was an associate artist); South Pacific, Joe Orton's Funeral Games and his own musical Dick Daredevil and play Venom (The Drill Hall); Joe Orton's Crimes of Passion and his own plays Stealing the Scene, Succulence and Mermaid Sandwich ; and radical Shakespeare adaptations The Wax King (from Henry VI parts 1, 2 & 3 ), Iago (from Othello) and Illyria (from Twelfth Night) at The Man in The Moon.
In 2013, Willmott directed the Modern World Premiere of Fair Em at the Union Theatre.
Elsewhere regionally he has directed Rent (Olympia, Dublin); Pal Joey (The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich & Nottingham Playhouse); Beautiful and Damned (The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford); Angels in America and Kiss of the Spider Woman (Sheffield Crucible).
His community play Don Juan in Kingston launched the Rose Theatre in Kingston with a cast of nearly 200, and he has directed on-board entertainment for Swan Hellenic's Minerva Cruise Ships and staged The London International Film Awards.
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