Howard Brenton

Howard John Brenton (born 13 December 1942) is an English playwright.

Early years

He was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of Donald Henry Brenton and his wife Rose Lilian (Lewis).

Brenton was educated at Chichester High School For Boys and St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

While at Cambridge he wrote a play, Ladder of Fools (1965). His one-act play, It's My Criminal, was performed at the Royal Court Theatre (1966).

In 1968 he joined the Brighton Combination as a writer and actor, and in 1969 joined Portable Theatre (founded by David Hare and Tony Bicat), for whom he wrote Christie in Love, staged in the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs (1969) and Fruit (1970).

He was also the author of Winter, Daddykins (1966), Revenge for the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and the triple-bill Heads, Gum & Goo and The Education of Skinny Spew (1969). These were followed by Wesley (1970); Scott of the Antarctic and A Sky-blue Life (1971); Hitler Dances, How Beautiful With Badges, and an adaptation of Measure for Measure (1972).

Career

In 1973 Brenton and David Hare were jointly commissioned by Richard Eyre to write a 'big' play for Nottingham Playhouse. "The result was Brassneck, which offered an exhiliratingly panoramic satire on England from 1945 to the present, depicting the meteoric ups and downs of a self-seeking Midlands family...from singing the Red Flag in 1945 to acting as a conduit for the Oriental drug market in the decadent Seventies." - Michael Billington (2007) ^[1].

Brassneck was followed a year later by Brenton's The Churchill Play, again staged by Richard Eyre at the Nottingham Playhouse (1974), another 'state of the nation play' about the growing conflict between security and liberty, opening with the chilling image of a dead Winston Churchill rising from his catafalque in Westminster Hall. Brenton's play "offered an imaginative vision of a future in which basic human freedoms would be curtailed by the state. As so often, a dramatist saw things that others did not.' Ibid, M. Billington (2007).

Brenton's next major success was Weapons of Happiness, about a strike in a south London factory, commissioned by the National Theatre for its the new Lyttelton Theatre and the first commissioned play to be performed at its South Bank home^[2]. Staged by Hare in July 1976, it won the Evening Standard award for Best Play.

He gained notoriety for his play The Romans in Britain, first staged at the National Theatre in October 1980, which drew parallels between the Roman invasion of Britain in 54BC and the British military presence in Northern Ireland. But the politics of his play were ignored.

Instead a display of moral outrage focused on a scene of attempted anal rape of a Druid priest (played by Greg Hicks), caught bathing by a Roman centurion (Peter Sproule). This resulted in a private prosecution by the puritanical Mary Whitehouse against the play's director, Michael Bogdanov. But Whitehouse's prosecution was withdrawn by her own legal team when it became obvious that it would not succeed.

The theme of Brenton's 1985 political comedy Pravda, a collaboration with David Hare who also directed, was aptly described by Michael Billington in The Guardian 3 May 1985 as "the rapacious absorption of chunks of the British press by a tough South African entrepreneur, Lambert Le Roux....superbly embodied by Anthony Hopkins who utters every sentence with precise Afrikaans over-articulation as if the rest of the world are idiots." The target of the satire was generally accepted to be the Australian international newspaper proprietor Rupert Murdoch and his News International empire, but the play's main question mark was about the dangers for society and the state of monopolistic media ownership, with Hopkins making one of his last great, actorly stage appearances, a foretaste of his Hannibal Lecter on screen.

In 2008 most theatre critics expressed surprise that Brenton, long a political firebrand of the hard Left, author with Tariq Ali of several anti-establishment squibs, had written a biographical play about Harold Macmillan — Never So Good at the National Theatre — that seemed wholly sympathetic to the former Tory prime minister. It was perhaps forgotten that Brenton, shortly before, had written a challenging play about the biblical figure of Saint Paul and a nimble romance about the love affair between the 12th century theologian Pierre Abelard and his attractive young student Heloise, suggesting a broadening of Brenton's political outlook if not a Damascene conversion. But it may also be noted that Jeremy Irons’s central performance focused not on Macmillan as a wily political opportunist but on his unruffled urbanity and charm, an old Etonian with a profound sense of decency who eventually loses his way in a world of swiftly shifting values.

Personal life

He married Jane Margaret Brenton.

Works

Plays

• Christie in Love, Portable Theatre, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (1969)
• Gum and Goo, Brighton Combination (1969); RSC at the Open Space Theatre (1971)
• Revenge, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (1969)
• Heads, University of Bradford Drama Group (1969); Inter-Action at the Ambience-in-Exile Lunch Hour Theatre Club (1970)
• The Education of Skinny Spew, University of Bradford Drama Group (1969); Inter-Action at the Ambience-in-Exile Lunch Hour Theatre Club (1970)
• Fruit (1970)
• Wesley, Bradford Festival (1970)
• Scott of the Antarctic, Bradford Festival (1971)
• Hitler Dances, Traverse Theatre Workshop (1972)
• Measure for Measure (adaptation), Northcott Theatre (1972)
• Magnificence, Royal Court (1973)
• Brassneck, written with David Hare, Nottingham Playhouse (1973)
• The Churchill Play, Nottingham Playhouse (1974); revived by the RSC 1978 and 1988
• The Saliva Milkshake, Soho Poly Lunchtime Theatre (1975)
• Weapons of Happiness, National Theatre, Lyttelton (1976); winner of the Evening Standard award 1976; revived by the Finborough Theatre, 2008
• Epsom Downs, Joint Stock Theatre Company (1977)
• Deeds, written with Trevor Griffiths, Ken Campbell, and David Hare, Nottingham Playhouse (1978)
• Sore Throats, RSC Donmar Warehouse (1978)
• The Life of Galileo, translation from Bertolt Brecht, National Theatre, Olivier (August 1980)
• The Romans in Britain, National Theatre, Olivier (October 1980)
• A Short Sharp Shock, written with Tony Howard, Royal Court at the Theatre Royal Stratford East (1980)
• Thirteenth Night, RSC Donmar Warehouse (1981)
• Danton's Death, translation from Georg Büchner, National Theatre, Olivier (July 1982)
• Conversations in Exile, adapted from Brecht, Foco Novo (1982)
• The Genius, Royal Court (1983)
• Sleeping Policemen, written with Tunde Ikoli, Foco Novo, Hemel Hempstead then Royal Court (1983)
• Bloody Poetry, Foco Novo, Hampstead Theatre (1984); Royal Court (1987)
• Pravda, written with David Hare, National Theatre, Olivier (1985); winner of the Evening Standard Award 1985
• Greenland, Royal Court (1988)
• H.I.D. (Hess is Dead), RSC, Almeida Theatre (1989)
• Iranian Nights with Tariq Ali, Royal Court (1989)
• Moscow Gold with Tariq Aii, RSC Barbican Theatre (1990)
• Berlin Bertie, Royal Court (1992)
• Faust Parts 1 and 2, translation from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, RSC Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon (September 1995); RSC The Pit (September 1996)
• Ugly Rumours, with Tariq Ali, Tricycle Theatre (1998)
• Collateral Damage with Tariq Ali and Andy de la Tour, Tricycle Theatre (1999)
• Snogging Ken with Tariq Ali and Andy de la Tour, Almeida Theatre (2000)
• Kit's Play, RADA Jerwood Theatre, (2000)
• Paul, National Theatre, Cottesloe (November 2005) [1], Olivier nomination for Best Play
• In Extremis, Shakespeare's Globe (2006) [2], revived 2007
• Never So Good, National Theatre, Lyttelton (2008) [3]

Books

• Diving for Pearls (novel), Nick Hern Books (1989) ISBN 9781854590251
• Hot Irons (diaries, essays, journalism), Nick Hern Books (1995) ISBN 1854591231; reissued in an expanded version, Methuen (1998)

Radio

• Nasser's Eden (1998)

Libretto

• Playing Away, libretto for Ben Mason's football opera, Opera North and Munich Biennale (1994); revived Bregenz Festival (2007)

Screenplays

• Lushly (1972)
• The Saliva Milkshake, BBC (1975)
• The Paradise Run, Thames TV (1976)
• Desert of Lies, BBC Play for Today (1984)
• Dead Head, BBC 4-part series (1986)
• Spooks, BBC drama series (2002-2005), fourteen episodes; BAFTA Best Drama Series 2003
  • "Traitor's Gate"
  • "The Rose Bed Memoirs"
  • "Mean, Dirty, Nasty" (with David Wolstencroft)
  • "Nest of Angels"
  • "Blood & Money"
  • "I Spy Apocalypse"
  • "Smoke & Mirrors"
  • "Project Friendly Fire"
  • "The Sleeper"
  • "Who Guards the Guards" (with Rupert Walters)
  • "Celebrity"
  • "Road Trip"
  • "The Russian"
  • "Diana"

Awards

• Evening Standard Award for best play of 1976, for Weapons of Happiness
• Evening Standard Award for best play of 1985, for Pravda

References

• The Second Wave by John Russell Taylor, Methuen 1978 reprint
• Who's Who in the Theatre, 17th Edition, Gale (1981)
• Brenton: Plays One, Methuen 1986 ISBN 0413404307
• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes
• Howard Brenton's CV for Never So Good RNT programme 2008

External links

• Brenton, the Literary Encyclopedia
• The Observer Profile: Howard Brenton (10/2005)
• Guardian interview (05/2007)