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Brenton Plays: 1: Christie in Love; The Churchill Play; Weapons of Happiness; Epsom Downs; Sore Throats; Magnificence

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Brenton Plays: 1: Christie in Love; The Churchill Play; Weapons of Happiness; Epsom Downs; Sore Throats; Magnificence
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Howard Brenton
SeriesContemporary Dramatists
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:416
Dimensions(mm): Height 180,Width 120
Category/GenrePlays, playscripts
ISBN/Barcode 9780413404305
ClassificationsDewey:822.914
Audience
General
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Professional & Vocational

Publishing Details

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint Methuen Drama
Publication Date 11 December 1986
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Howard Brenton is one of Britain's best-known and most controversial dramatists Christie in Love is based on the story of John Christie, the 19th century serial killer, "like Genet, [Brenton] feels for the outcast But he's less sentimentally involved with his criminals, clearer about his ultimate strategy to show the unreality of straight lines in a curved universe, of the roles society forces on us." (Observer). "Doing our 'umble best, Ma'am to wreck society", Magificence puts the small people and their protests against the bourgeois state on stage; it was described as "A wonderful piece of theatre; annexing whole new chunks of modern life and presenting them in a style at once fruitful and magnified." (The Times) In The Churchill Play, Brenton brings Churchill back to life to view the future that he invented for England and "Brenton finds a way of making us look again at the past which has shaped the future into which he sees us drifting" (New Society). Weapons of Happiness is "a vision of revolution which is quite extraordinary in its creative ambiguity, its richness, its power to stimulate, to threaten and to inspire" (Sunday Times) while Epsom Downs "echoes Bartholomew Fair: a great public festival, held on common land and pulling in punters of every degree a teaming, Bruegel-like composition" (The Times) The last play in this collection Sore Throats, is a witty and harsh examination of sexual proclivities from within and outside marriage: "No recent play compares for theatrical power and painful bravado." (Observer)

Author Biography

Howard Brenton is one of the UK's most respected dramatists. His acclaimed plays include The Romans In Britain, Bloody Poetry, Weapons of Happiness, Pravda with David Hare and, more recently, In Extremis, Anne Boleyn and Doctor Scroggy's War for Shakespeare's Globe, Paul and Never So Good for the National Theatre, and 55 Days, The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, Drawing the Line and Lawrence After Arabia for Hampstead Theatre. He also wrote fourteen episodes of BBC spy drama Spooks.