Keith Merrill

Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Keith began his training at The Walnut Hill School of the Arts. After receiving a scholarship to Tanglewood he was accepted into The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London followed by The Royal Academy of Music’s Post-Grad Music Theatre Course. Having trained in the Shakespeare First Folio Approach at The Academy he brought back to New York his passion for great plays and the mastery of language. Sharing in Eva Le Gallienne’s dream of a true theatre for the people, where classics are a staple in an audience’s theatrical diet and where standards and consistency are paramount, he opened Noël and Company in order to nurture those ideals and to champion Le G’s legacy. As artistic director he’s helmed Star Quality with Bebe Neuwirth and Brian Murray; Design For Living with Kevin Collins and Amy Rutberg; Ghosts with Richard Easton and Michael Urie; After The Dance with Tina Benko and Liliom with Erin Davie. He’s produced The Vortex starring Edward Hibbert, Bobby Steggert and Suzanne Bertish, directed by Gabriel Barre; The Mousetrap with Carole Shelley, Paxton Whitehead and Jill Paice, directed by Larry Fuller; Entertaining Mr. Sloane with Nancy Opel and Paxton Whitehead, co-directed with Daniel Goldstein and What Every Woman Knows with Carole Shelley and Aedin Moloney, directed by David Glenn Armstrong – all co-produced by Le G’s dear friend Anne Kaufman, daughter of the great George S. Kaufman. Keith wrote the one-man revue, Frankly Sinatra, for The RSC Summerhouse in Stratford-upon-Avon and his show, Noël Coward: The Women of His World was commissioned by The Noël Coward Foundation’s Noël Coward Festival in NYC, starring Alan Cox, Dana Ivey, Cady Huffman and Dee Hoty. As an actor his credits include the National Tours of Camelot with Robert Goulet as Mordred and The Crucible with Gareth Thomas, understudying and playing John Proctor in the UK – his first professional debut. US regional theatre includes: Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Cincinnati Playhouse; St. Louis Rep; Geva; Fulton; Casa Mañana. Off-Broadway: Abingdon Theatre Company; Irish Repertory Theatre; Lost Musicals. His UK credits include The Glass Menagerie with Honor Blackman, Single Spies at Leicester Curve with Dilys Laye; Edinburgh, City of London and Covent Garden Festivals. He is currently working on the stage adaptation of Coward’s brilliant novel Pomp and Circumstance. www.noelandcompany.org.