Richard Monette: Actor and long-serving Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival

Although he acted in Britain, mainly in the 1970s when he earned at least a footnote in theatrical history as one of the original full-frontal cast of Oh! Calcutta!, Richard Monette was a major player in North American theatre, principally through his long association with Canada's leading theatre, at Stratford, Ontario, as actor and then for 14 seasons until last year as its Artistic Director.

An often flamboyant, outspoken personality, Monette wore his heart mostly on his sleeve; that he was also vulnerable was due partly to his early confusion about his sexuality (he had a long and complex relationship with fellow Calcutta! performer Domini Blythe before coming to terms with his gay nature) and was also connected to a late-career attack of stage fright.

Born in Montreal in 1944, Monette had a troubled family background – an alcoholic father and a nervy, pill-addicted mother – although he found a haven in his schooldays at Loyola High School where his early artistic leanings were encouraged. He then went on to Loyola College where he was a committed student actor; one performance was strong enough to land him a leading television role in a version of Turgenev's First Love for CBC in Toronto.

The city's theatre scene was lively in the 1960s. Monette, aged only 19, was a pensive, grief-cankered Prince in Hamlet (Toronto, 1964) for the ambitious Crest Theatre Company. The following year took him to the Stratford Festival, launching a lifelong relationship, initially to play a string of supporting roles in both parts of Henry IV (1965). He then played Peter Dorlund in the controversial Rolf Hochhuth play covering Winston Churchill's alleged complicity in General Skiorski's death, Soldiers (Toronto and New York, 1968), directed by Clifford Williams, in which he made his Broadway début.

A staunch multiculturalist – he spoke three languages fluently – Monette always believed in widening his theatrical horizons and he came to the UK in 1969. His work in Britain included seasons at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park and with the Royal Shakespeare Company (which made scant use of his talent) before his appearance in Kenneth Tynan's satirical sexual revue Oh! Calcutta! (also directed by Clifford Williams).

On his return to Canada he scored one of his outstanding successes in Hosanna by the leading French-Canadian dramatist Michael Tremblay, much championed by Monette, in which he gave a bravura and affecting performance as a transvestite obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor's performance as Cleopatra. The Broadway production (Bijou, New York, 1970) promised to open lucrative American doors but Monette was committed to Canadian theatre, especially at an exciting time in Stratford's fortunes as the English director Robin Phillips was beginning his remarkable era as Artistic Director.

During the Phillips years Monette, along with William Hutt, Martha Henry and Brian Bedford (not to mention regular appearances by Maggie Smith) became a company mainstay. His many roles included a dazzlingly mannered Berowne, matured by love in Love's Labour's Lost, a startlingly feral Caliban in The Tempest, Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest and Edmund in King Lear. A personal tour de force was his riveting performance in Barry Collins's solo play Judgement.

Monette was characteristically and angrily outspoken when the Stratford board of governors – like so many other theatrical boards – spectacularly mishandled the question of a successor when Phillips resigned. They initially appointed and then promptly dismissed a directorial quartet (a hopelessly impractical plan) and then appointed John Dexter (until it became clear that he had no intention of ditching the Metropolitan Opera for Stratford alone). Unsurprisingly, Monette was not seen on the Stratford stage for almost a decade. He concentrated on television and on theatre work at the St Lawrence Center, Toronto – where he had his first bout of stage fright.

Directing became his lifeline. A first major production, The Taming of the Shrew (1988) for John Neville's new Stratford regime, proved that Monette was a master of Stratford's testing open stage. During the 1990s, when Canada suffered a recession, the Stratford operation's future was in serious peril, with a swelling deficit and low morale. Monette was appointed to succeed David William as Artistic Director in 1992.

His early years combined risk with an unexpected financial acumen; the accumulated deficit had become a significant surplus by the end of his first season. There was some criticism of his inclusion of musicals – Camelot, Anything Goes – in the repertoire, but these were shrewdly programmed among classical productions including a joyous multiracial version of Twelfth Night, as well as The Tempest and King Lear (both with William Hutt at peak power), and a stylish scrutiny of Wilde's four-act version of The Importance of Being Earnest.

After nearly a decade away, Monette also happily returned to the stage, appearing in a richly textured production of Eduardo de Filippo's Filumena (1997). He retired – his health, after treatment for pulmonary problems and prostate cancer, was already precarious – in 2007, leaving Stratford in fine financial and artistic form. As Canada's leading actor Christopher Plummer said: "The single most important thing he will be remembered for is that he saved this theatre."

Alan Strachan

Richard Monette, actor and director: born Montreal 19 June 1944; Artistic Director, Stratford Festival 1994-2007; died London, Ontario 9 September 2008.

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