Bob Carlton

Bob Carlton (23 June 1950 – 18 January 2018) was an English theatre director and writer. He is best known for creating and directing the jukebox musical Return to the Forbidden Planet, which won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical in both 1989 and 1990 and has been produced in many different countries around the world. Carlton's hit musical combined rock'n'roll songs with some dialogue found in the works of William Shakespeare – primarily The Tempest – plus original action and dialogue adapting the plot and characters from Forbidden Planet, the 1956 science fiction film that play inspired. He also employed parts of this formula in 1984 with From A Jack To A King, a similar jukebox musical adaptation of Macbeth with dialogue written in iambic pentameter.