John McGrath (playwright)

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Detail from the front cover of the programme for McGrath's A Satire of the Four Estaites (1996), showing Amy Trompetter's drawing of the costume for Gloria Cupsize.

John Peter McGrath (1 June 1935 – 22 January 2002) was a British playwright and theatre theorist who took up the cause of Socialism in his plays.

Early life and career

From an Irish Catholic background, McGrath was born in Birkenhead, and educated in Mold and, after his National Service, at St John's College, Oxford.[1] During the early 1960s he worked for the BBC, and wrote and directed many of the early episodes of the corporation's police series Z-Cars which began in 1962.

Theatrical career

McGrath is best remembered as a playwright and for his theoretical formulation of the principles of a radical, popular theatre. His play Soft Or A Girl was performed at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in the early 1970s with great success.l, including in the cast the actor Alison Steadman. The play dealt with, amongst other things, the role of the city council in continuing, as the play claims, Hitler's destruction of large parts of the inner city and, with it, parts of its history The

Scottish highlands to make way for grazing land, the subsequent use of this land by the wealthy for shooting, and its current exploitation in the oil market. These changes are identified as forming a recurrent pattern of abuse of the land and the exploitation of the people by outsiders and by wealthier locals. It was broadcast in the BBC's Play for Today series in 1974.[2]

He adapted the satirical morality play A Satire of the Three Estates (1540) by David Lyndsay as a contemporary morality A Satire of the Four Estaites, which was presented by Wildcat Theatre Company at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre as part of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1996.[3] This production opened on 16 August 1996 and featured Sylvester McCoy.[3]

Personal life

In 1962 he had married Elizabeth MacLennan, the Scottish actress, whom he had met while they were both at Oxford University; the couple had two sons and a daughter.

Death

McGrath died from leukemia in January 2002.[4] In McGrath's obituary published by The Guardian, Michael Billington wrote: "No one since Joan Littlewood did more to advance the cause of popular theatre in Britain than John McGrath".[1]

Reviews

References

  1. ^ a b Michael Billington Obituary: John McGrath, The Guardian, 24 January 2002
  2. ^ a b Ewan Davidson "Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, The (1974)", BFI screenonline
  3. ^ a b From the programme to the production.
  4. ^ Brian Logan "What did you do in the class war, Daddy?", The Guardian, 15 May 2002

Sources

Externals

John McGrath on IMDb

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