Claire van Kampen, Tony-Nominated Playwright of Farinelli and the King, Dies at 71

Mark Rylance and Claire van Kampen
(Photo by Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com)

Claire van Kampen, a musical director and Tony-nominated playwright who frequently worked with her husband Mark Rylance, died on January 18 in Kassel, Germany. Her daughter, Juliet Rylance, said on social media that the cause was cancer. Van Kampen was 71.

Claire van Kampen was born on November 3, 1953, in London. Having studied music theory and piano at the Royal College of Music in London, she became the musical director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986. She met Rylance working on a production of The Wandering Jew at the Royal National Theatre in 1987. They married two years later.

In 1997, she was appointed Director of Theatre Music for the newly reopened Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 1997, creating music for 30 productions during Rylance’s term as artistic director and beyond.

Van Kampen went on to compose original music for the Broadway productions True West (2000), Boeing-Boeing (2008) and La Bête (2010). In 2013, Van Kampen was the composer, arranger and musical director for Twelfth Night and Richard III, which starred Rylance and featured a pit band of musicians playing Elizabethan instruments.

In 2015, her playwriting debut, Farinelli and the King, about the 18th-century Italian castrato singer and King Philip V of Spain, premiered in London, starring Rylance. The same year, Tudor-era music selected and arranged by Van Kampen featured on the soundtrack for television’s Wolf Hall.

In 2016, Van Kampen directed Nice Fish at St. Ann’s Warehouse, also starring Rylance. Farinelli and the King transferred to Broadway the following year, earning five Tony nominations including Best Play.

January 18 was Rylance’s birthday. Van Kampen is survived by her husband and a daughter from her first marriage.

Van Kampen was “one of the funniest and (most) inspiring women we have ever known,” the family said in a statement. “We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter, and love. Ring the bell, sound the trumpets reverie, something is done, something is beginning. One of the great wise ones has passed.”