Steven Pimlott, 53; British theater, opera director staged ‘Joseph’

Steven Pimlott, 53, a British theater and opera director known in the U.S. for staging “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” died Feb. 14 at his home near Colchester in England.

The cause was lung cancer, said his agent, Harriet Cruickshank.

Pimlott’s “style ranged from extravagant flamboyance to high European elegance to stripped-down purity,” said Michael Boyd, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare company. Pimlott was an associate director at the company from 1996 to 2002.

He was born April 18, 1953, in Stockport, England. A graduate of Cambridge University, Pimlott was hired as a producer by the English National Opera in 1976 and the Royal Opera Company two years later.

In 1993, he directed a revival of “Joseph,” one of the first collaborations of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. The production also played Broadway.

Directing a hundred singing and dancing children was “much easier than directing grown-ups,” Pimlott told The Times in 1993. “A, they do what they’re told. And B, on the whole, they do it better.”

More recently, Pimlott had directed the Lloyd Webber-produced Bollywood musical “Bombay Dreams” on Broadway in 2004.