Philip King (playwright)

Last updated

Phillip King
Born30 October 1904
Died9 February 1979 (aged 65)
Occupation(s)Playwright, dramatist, actor
Years active(1920-.c1975)


Philip King (30 October 1904 – 9 February 1979) was an English playwright and actor, born in Yorkshire. He is best known as the author of the farce See How They Run (1944). He lived in Brighton and many of his plays were first produced in nearby Worthing. He continued to act throughout his writing career, often appearing in his own plays. [1]

Contents

Biography

Philip King began his career on his sixteenth birthday as an actor with a small touring company in the North of England, graduating to the Repertory Company at the Opera House, Harrogate. There he subsequently directed plays and saw his first comedy Without the Prince professionally produced, and shortly after presented in the West End at the Whitehall Theatre on 8 April 1940.

King made several appearances on the London stage, playing with such well-known stars as Sid Field, Frances Day and Hugh Wakefield and despite his success as a writer he was still drawn to his first love of acting. [2]

Of the events surrounding the West End first night of See How They Run, in January 1945, King wrote:

"At the time I was in the RAF and, luckily, stationed at the White City, Shepherd's Bush. During my four years service I had risen from the rank of AC2 (the lowest rank possible) to AC1 (not the highest), but I was fortunate inasmuch as, owing to the shortage of accommodation at White City, I was allowed to 'live out' in civilian digs. "By the grace of God the play went like a bomb - even three 'doodlebugs' [3] dropped during the performance. George Gee, playing the leading part, swore that all three dropped as he was saying his funniest lines. No one left the theatre until the play was over. "The morning after the 'first night' I went down to Shepherd's Bush, bought every morning paper there was, and went to my usual workmen's cafe directly opposite RAF White City, and over a pint mug of tea and a Spam sandwich read the notices. "They were marvellous! But, as I read them, I suddenly remembered the pictures I had seen of Noel Coward sitting up in a wonderful looking bed, in an even more wonderful dressing-gown, a silver tray at his side, reading his notices! And here was I...a pint mug of tea and a thick Spam sandwich. But what the hell? I had a success. That's all that really mattered." [4]

He was a keen member of Swanwick writers' summer school serving on the committee in 1973. [5]

Works

Dates are first publication, or first production if this is earlier.

Sole author

Co-author

With Falkland Cary

  • Crystal Clear (1941)
  • Sailor Beware! (1955)
  • The Dream House (1957)
  • An Air For Murder (1958)
  • Watch it, Sailor! (1960)
  • Rock-A-Bye, Sailor! (1962)
  • Big Bad Mouse (1964)
  • Wife Required (date unknown)
  • Housekeeper Wanted (date unknown)

With John Boland

  • Murder In Company (1973)
  • Who Says Murder (1975)
  • Elementary, My Dear (1975)

With others

Filmography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Pinter</span> English playwright (1930–2008)

Harold Pinter was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964) and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1971), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993) and Sleuth (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vivien Merchant</span> English actress (1929–1982)

Ada Brand Thomson, known professionally as Vivien Merchant, was an English actress. She began her career in 1942, and became known for dramatic roles on stage and in films. In 1956 she married the playwright Harold Pinter and performed in many of his plays.

<i>The Dumb Waiter</i> Play by Harold Pinter

The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play by Harold Pinter written in 1957.

<i>Blithe Spirit</i> (play) Play written by Noël Coward

Blithe Spirit is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peggy Ashcroft</span> English actress (1907–1991)

Dame Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, known professionally as Peggy Ashcroft, was an English actress whose career spanned more than 60 years.

<i>Armchair Theatre</i> British television series

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by ABC Weekend TV. Its successor Thames Television took over from mid-1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Alderton</span> English actor

John Alderton is an English actor. He is best known for his roles in Upstairs, Downstairs, Thomas & Sarah, Wodehouse Playhouse, Little Miss, Please Sir!, No, Honestly and Fireman Sam. Alderton has often starred alongside his wife, Pauline Collins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peggy Mount</span> English actress

Margaret Rose Mount OBE was an English actress. As a child, she found acting an escape from an unhappy home life. After playing in amateur productions, she was taken on by a repertory company and spent nine years in various British towns, learning her craft. In 1955, she got her big break in the comic play Sailor Beware!: she created the leading role in a repertory production and, though unknown to London audiences, was given the part when the play was presented in the West End. She became known for playing domineering middle-aged women in plays, films and television shows.

The Elephant Man is a play by Bernard Pomerance. It premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London on 7 November 1977. It later played in repertory at the National Theatre in London. It ran Off-Broadway from 14 January to 18 March 1979, at The Theatre at St. Peter's. The production's Broadway debut in 1979 at the Booth Theatre was produced by Richmond Crinkley and Nelle Nugent, and directed by Jack Hofsiss. The play closed in 1981 after eight previews and 916 regular performances, with revivals in 2002 and 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Saville</span> British screenwriter (1930–2016)

Philip Saville was a British director, screenwriter and former actor whose career lasted half a century. The British Film Institute's Screenonline website described Saville as "one of Britain's most prolific and pioneering television and film directors". His work included 45 contributions to Armchair Theatre (1956–1972) and he won two Best Drama Series BAFTAs for Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986).

Douglas William Hodge is an English actor, director, and musician who has had an extensive career in theatre, as well as television and film where he has appeared in Robin Hood (2010), Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return and Diana (2013), Penny Dreadful (2016), Catastrophe (2018), Joker and Lost in Space (2019), and The Great (2020–2023).

The Room is Harold Pinter's first play, written and first produced in 1957. Considered by critics the earliest example of Pinter's "comedy of menace", this play has strong similarities to Pinter's second play, The Birthday Party, including features considered hallmarks of Pinter's early work and of the so-called Pinteresque: dialogue that is comically familiar and yet disturbingly unfamiliar, simultaneously or alternatingly both mundane and frightening; subtle yet contradictory and ambiguous characterizations; a comic yet menacing mood characteristic of mid-twentieth-century English tragicomedy; a plot featuring reversals and surprises that can be both funny and emotionally moving; and an unconventional ending that leaves at least some questions unresolved.

<i>See How They Run</i> (play) Play

See How They Run is an English comedy in three acts by Philip King. Its title is a line from the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice". It is considered a farce for its tense comic situations and headlong humour, heavily playing on mistaken identity, doors, and vicars. In 1955 it was adapted as a film starring Roland Culver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Billington (critic)</span> British author and arts critic

Michael Keith Billington OBE is a British author and arts critic. He writes for The Guardian, and was the paper's chief drama critic from 1971 to 2019. Billington is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts. He is the authorised biographer of the playwright Harold Pinter (1930–2008).

Nikos Kourkoulos was a highly respected Greek theatrical and film performer, one of the most talented and recognizable actors in Greece of modern times. Kourkoulos is best known to Greek audiences for playing "Angelos Kreouzis" in Oratotis miden, but he also appeared in other movies such as To Homa vaftike kokkino, Exodos kindynou, O Astrapogiannos, O Katiforos among others.

Ashes to Ashes is a 1996 play by English playwright Harold Pinter. It was first performed, in Dutch, by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Netherlands' largest repertory company, in Amsterdam, as part of its 1996–1997 season, and directed by Titus Muizelaar, who reprised his production, in Dutch with English surtitles, as part of a double bill with Buff, by Gerardjan Rijnders, at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, from 23 through 27 June 1998. Its English première by the Royal Court Theatre opened after the Dutch première, at the Ambassadors Theatre, in London, on 12 September 1996.

Sir Michael Victor Codron is a British theatre producer, known for his productions of the early work of Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard. He has been honoured with a Laurence Olivier Award for Lifetime Achievement, and is a stakeholder and director of the Aldwych Theatre in the West End, London.

<i>Sailor Beware!</i> (play)

Sailor Beware! is a comic play by Philip King and Falkland Cary. After a repertory company production in Worthing in 1954, it opened in the West End of London on 16 February 1955 and ran for 1,231 performances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raj Bisaria</span> Indian director, actor, producer, and educationist

Raj Bisaria is an Indian director, producer, actor and educationalist, described by the Press Trust of India as "the father of the modern theatre in North India". He founded Theatre Arts Workshop in 1966, and Bhartendu Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1975 and the repertory company of Bhartendu Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1980. He has blended artistic concepts of the East and the West, and the traditional and the modern.

The Southern Comedy Players, later the Southern Players and the Southern Theatre Trust, were a New Zealand theatre company, active between 1957 and 1971. They were founded by William Menlove and Bernard Esquilant, and based in Dunedin.

References

  1. Richmond Theatre programme CV, 28 February 2006
  2. Programme biography for the December 1978 revival of See How They Run at Greenwich Theatre.
  3. German unmanned V-1 flying bombs used to attack London as a continuation of the Blitz
  4. Philip King memoir of the See How They Run first night, reproduced in the Greenwich Theatre programme, December 1978.
  5. Martin, Nancy (1983). Venture of Faith - A History of Swanwick. Worthing: H.E. Walter Ltd. ISBN   0-85479-066-7.
  6. On Q: Jack and Beatie de Leon and the Q Theatre by Kenneth Barrow, Heritage Publications (1992) ISBN   978-0-9519089-0-7
  7. Phillip King & Anthony Armstrong. Here We Come Gathering. London: Samuel French Ltd. "First produced by the High Wycombe Repertory Company on January 15th, 1951".