Doris Abrahams

Who was Doris Abrahams?

Doris Cole Abrahams was a theater producer who won two Tony Awards for Peter Shaffer's play Equus and Tom Stoppard's Travesties.

Doris Cole was born in the Bronx to a magician father who ran a magic store. She grew up in Manhattan and Brookline, Massachusetts, and started in theater by sweeping stage floors and acting in summer stock performances. In 1945, while still in her teens, she became the producer of Blue Holiday, an all-black Broadway variety show that ran for eight performances at the Belasco Theater, starring Katherine Dunham, Ethel Waters and Josh White.

She married Gerald M. Abrahams, the chairman of the luxury clothing manufacturer Aquascutum and returned with him to London. There, the elaborate parties she prepared for her husband's clients allowed her to join with Oscar Lewenstein Productions, where she was involved with plays such as Semi-Detached with Laurence Olivier, as well as the Albert Finney vehicles Billy Liar as Luther. She started Albion Productions in the mid-1960s, putting on a total of eight plays in the West End theatre, among them Tom Stoppard's Enter a Free Man in 1968 and Travesties in 1974.