John Caird is widely known as the co-director with fellow Englishman Trevor Nunn of "Les Miserables," which opened in the West End 1985 and is still playing there in the longest-ever London run for a musical.
However, Caird's illustrious career as a writer and director also spans opera and contemporary theater — though as his honorary associate director position at the Royal Shakespeare Company suggests, his forte is the Bard.
Indeed, as recently as this February the Daily Telegraph's theater critic Dominic Cavendish singled out Caird's "Hamlet" at the National Theatre in London in 2000, and his casting of Simon Russell Beale as an unusually sweet and studious Prince of Denmark, for top spot in an article titled "The 10 great Hamlets of our time" — and that despite "Tubby or not tubby" being a popular quip about its slightly portly star.