Brenton Plays: 1

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