John Dexter; Director Won 2 Tony Awards

LONDON —  John Dexter, a stage director whose career ran from London’s Royal Court Theater to Broadway and whose productions included such hits as “Equus” and “M. Butterfly” as well as operas at Covent Garden and New York’s Metropolitan, has died at age 64.

The Times of London reported Monday that his death Friday in a London hospital was the result of heart failure.

In the United States, Daily Variety said that he had died during heart bypass surgery.

Dexter was best known on Broadway for his direction of “Equus” in 1974 and “M. Butterfly” in 1988, both of which won him Tony awards.

In 1976, he was given a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for restaging “Equus” in Los Angeles.

Dexter had made his Broadway debut in 1963 with Arnold Wesker’s “Chips With Everything.”

Among his other notable Broadway productions were “Black Comedy” and “The Royal Hunt of the Sun,” both written by Peter Shaffer, and “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” the Richard Rodgers-Stephen Sondheim musical.

Dexter’s last Broadway assignment was the ill-fated “The Threepenny Opera,” starring rock idol Sting, which closed in December after a short run.

Dexter began his theater career at the Royal Court in 1957 and then was asked by Laurence Olivier to join the National Theater as an associate director. There he directed “Othello,” with Olivier playing the title role and Maggie Smith as Desdemona. Among his other successes at the National Theater were “The Misanthrope,” with Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg, “Hobson’s Choice” and “Phaedra Britannica” with Rigg.

In 1979, he presented the first major staging of “Pygmalion” in Los Angeles since Gertrude Lawrence played the role at the old Belasco Theatre in the late 1940s.

Dexter directed his first opera in 1966, a revival of Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini” at Covent Garden. He later worked at the Hamburg State Opera, the Paris Opera and the Metropolitan. At the New York house, he directed productions of such diverse operas as “I Vespri Siciliani,” a widely praised, grimly abstract 1977 “Dialogues of the Carmelites,” “Lulu,” “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” “Billy Budd” and “Parade,” a triple bill of French operas with scenery by David Hockney.

The Times of London did not note survivors.