Obituaries : Wilford Leach; Prize-Winning Show Director

Wilford Leach, the Tony Award-winning director of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” who also won Broadway’s top award for his innovative revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance,” staged with a rock band and a slapstick chorus, has died of stomach cancer. He was 59.

The principal director of the New York Shakespeare Festival died Saturday at home, said Joseph Papp, who runs the festival and who worked with Leach for more than 10 years.

“Wilford was my right hand and my left hand, too, because he was close to my heart,” Papp said. “He really gave me such a tremendous feeling of loyalty and understood the problems of running a theater.”

Leach went to the festival in 1977 as an associate director for its Central Park production of “Henry V.” He stayed to direct such other outdoor productions as “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Othello,” “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Twelfth Night.”

“The Pirates of Penzance,” starring Linda Ronstadt in 1980, and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” featuring George Rose and Patricia Routledge in 1985, were first performed in Central Park and later moved to Broadway for long runs. Leach won Tonys for both shows as best director of a musical.

Leach was a graduate of the College of William and Mary, where he saw his first play and subsequently decided on a career in the theater.