Weapons of Happiness is a 1976 political play by Howard Brenton, about a strike in a London crisp factory. The play makes use of a dramatic conceit whereby the Czech communist cabinet minister Josef Frank is imagined alive in the 1970s (in real life he was hanged in 1952), and his hallucinations of life in StalinistCzechoslovakia interweave with the main plot.
In an introduction to the play, Brenton wrote that he was "trying to write a kind of Jacobean play for our time, a 'British epic theatre'. Making only limited use of naturalism, the play features several long speeches; in the same introduction Brenton quotes Julie Covington, who appeared in the original production, as describing acting in it as being "like opening a furnace door - your time comes, you open the door and blaze, then shut it".[1]
Stage history
The play was commissioned by the National Theatre as part of a policy of staging new plays by leading authors in the company's new South Bank home.[2] At the time Brenton was a Marxist and seen as something of a polemicist;[3] however, in an interview with Theatre Quarterly from around the time the play was being written, he expressed dissatisfaction with fringe theatre - the context in which his plays had previously been seen - and a desire to reach the bigger audiences subsidised theatre companies would provide.[4] Furthermore, in the play's programme, Brenton disclaimed being a moralist.[5]
While the play drew in a younger, more radical audience to the National Theatre, Peter Hall, the artistic director of the theatre, noted in his diary that the stage crew (many of whom were political) did not care for it, and that he was disappointed by the newspaper reviews.[7] However, Michael Coveney was enthusiastic, describing in the Financial Times "highly charged scenes that speak directly about the quality of life in England today". The production ran for 41 performances,[5] and Weapons of Happiness went on to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Play.[1]
The play was sufficiently successful that after it opened Peter Hall asked Brenton for another, which would be the controversial The Romans in Britain.[3]
John William Polidori was a British writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story "The Vampyre" (1819), the first published modern vampire story. Although the story was at first erroneously credited to Lord Byron, both Byron and Polidori affirmed that the author was Polidori.
Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer which gives a fictional account of the lives of composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, imagining a rivalry between the two at the court of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. First performed in 1979, it was inspired by Alexander Pushkin's short 1830 play Mozart and Salieri, which Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov used in 1897 as the libretto for an opera of the same name.
The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT) within the UK and as the National Theatre of Great Britain internationally, is a performing arts venue and associated theatre company located in London, England. The theatre was founded by the actor Laurence Olivier in 1963, and many well-known actors have performed with it since.
Jane Asher is an English actress and author. She achieved early fame as a child actress, and then through her association with Paul McCartney, and has worked extensively in film and TV throughout her career.
Simon James Holliday Gray was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years. While teaching at Queen Mary, Gray began his writing career as a novelist in 1963 and, during the next 45 years, in addition to five published novels, wrote 40 original stage plays, screenplays, and screen adaptations of his own and others' works for stage, film and television and became well known for the self-deprecating wit characteristic of several volumes of memoirs or diaries.
Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland. He is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
The Evening Standard Theatre Awards, established in 1955, are the oldest theatrical awards ceremony in the United Kingdom. They are presented annually for outstanding achievements in London Theatre, and are organised by the Evening Standard newspaper. They are the West End's equivalent to Broadway's Drama Desk Awards.
Howard John Brenton FRSL is an English playwright and screenwriter. While little-known in the United States, he is celebrated in his home country and often ranked alongside contemporaries such as Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, and David Hare.
Desmond Hogan is an Irish writer. Awarded the 1977 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and 1980 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, his oeuvre comprises novels, plays, short stories and travel writing.
Sheridan Morley was an English author, biographer, critic and broadcaster. He was the official biographer of Sir John Gielgud and wrote biographies of many other theatrical figures he had known, including Noël Coward. Nicholas Kenyon called him a "cultural omnivore" who was "genuinely popular with people".
The Goebbels Diaries are a collection of writings by Joseph Goebbels, a leading member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Adolf Hitler's government from 1933 to 1945. The diaries, which have only recently been published in full in German and are available only in part in English, are a major source for the inner history of the Nazi Party and of its twelve years in power in Germany. The British historian Ian Kershaw wrote in the preface to his biography of Hitler: "For all the caution which must naturally be attached to Goebbels's regularly reported remarks by Hitler ... the immediacy as well as the frequency of the comments makes them a vitally important source of insight into Hitler's thinking and action."
Peter Gill is a Welsh theatre director, playwright, and actor. He was born in Cardiff to George John and Margaret Mary Gill, and educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.
Pravda is a satirical play by David Hare and Howard Brenton exploring the role of journalism in society. It was first produced at the National Theatre in London on 2 May 1985, directed by Hare and starring Anthony Hopkins in the role of Lambert Le Roux, white South African media mogul. Labelled a "Fleet Street comedy", it is a satire on the mid-1980s British newspaper industry during the Thatcher era, in particular the Australian press baron Rupert Murdoch. Its title refers to the Russian Communist party newspaper Pravda.
A Bequest to the Nation is a 1970 play by Terence Rattigan, based on his 1966 television play Nelson. It recounts the events surrounding Horatio Nelson, his mistress Emma Hamilton, and his wife Frances Nisbet in the events immediately before, during and after the Battle of Trafalgar. It also includes various other historical characters such as Thomas Hardy and William Nelson. The title refers to Nelson leaving Emma and their child Horatia to the nation on his death.
Josef Frank was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician.
Bloody Poetry is a 1984 play by Howard Brenton centring on the lives of Percy Shelley and his circle.
Silvion Oscar Lewenstein was a British theatre and film producer, who helped create some of the leading British theatre and film productions of the 1950s and 1960s.
John Goodwin was a British theatre publicist, writer and editor who played a crucial role in the development of subsidised theatre in post-war Britain; first with the Royal Shakespeare Company where in the 60s he led the media campaign against concerted attempts to close its flourishing London base; then with the Royal National Theatre where, as an associate director and member of its planning committee, he was a key figure in the administrative team which, in the '70s and '80s, shaped its historic first years on London's South Bank. He was the author of a number of books on the theatre including the best-selling A Short Guide to Shakspeare's Plays. He also edited and compiled the classic reference work British Theatre Design and edited the internationally best-selling diaries of Sir Peter Hall.
This is a summary of 1920 in music in the United Kingdom.
This is a summary of 1916 in music in the United Kingdom.
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