Sir Jonathan Miller takes on Dr Who

Sir Jonathan Miller, the theatre director and polymath, has hit out at London theatre producers for succumbing to "an obsession with celebrity" when casting West End plays, citing the Doctor Who actor David Tennant (pictured), who is to play Hamlet in a forthcoming Royal Shakespeare Company production, and Jude Law, as examples. Miller's criticisms come after two of his productions for the National Theatre, where he is an associate director, failed to get runs in London. According to him, this was because the cast had no famous names.

Of this setback, Miller, 73, says: "Producers might have been swayed if I’d been prepared to put in for more luminous names. But I wanted my original cast, who were absolutely first-class." He believes "it is merely the famous" that producers are interested in, and he refers to Tennant dismissively as "that man from Doctor Who". And of Jude Law, who will play Hamlet at the Donmar Warehouse, he says: "I suspect he can't act better than the young unknown who played him for me who was quite extraordinary."

None of this surprises the playwright Sir Arnold Wesker, however. "This has been growing over the past decade or 15 years. I don’t know whose fault it is, whether the producers or the public."