John Reich; Leading Chicago Theater Director
John Reich, the youngest director in the history of Austria’s National Theater who studied under Max Reinhardt and then came to the United States to lead Chicago’s Goodman Theater into a pre-eminent position in the drama world, died Tuesday at a hospital in Sarasota, Fla. He was 81 and his death was attributed to heart failure.
A native of Vienna, Reich moved to the United States in 1938 and earned a doctoral degree in theater arts at Cornell University. Before moving to Chicago he directed on television and at various schools throughout the country.
He and Jean Stock Goldstone adapted Friedrich Schiller’s “Mary Stuart” in a highly acclaimed production staged by Sir Tyrone Guthrie in Phoenix in 1957. The play starred Irene Worth and Eva Le Galliene. That also was the year he went to Goodman, then an adjunct to the Art Institute of Chicago, and molded it into a force that attracted thousands of subscribers.
After leaving Goodman in 1972, Reich directed and lectured at various universities.
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