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Trevor Griffiths | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1935-04-04)4 April 1935 Manchester, England |
| Died | 29 March 2024(2024-03-29) (aged 88) Boston Spa, England |
| Occupation | Dramatist |
| Alma mater | Manchester University |
| Period | 1964–2011 |
| Spouse |
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| Children | 3 |
Trevor Griffiths (4 April 1935 – 29 March 2024) was an English dramatist.
Born inAncoats,Manchester and brought up as aRoman Catholic by his mother, Annie, a bus conductor and father, Ernest, who worked in a factory. He attendedSt. Bede's College before being accepted intoManchester University in 1952 to read English.[1] He graduated in 1955.[2] After a brief involvement with professional football and a year innational service, he became a teacher[1] and then an education officer for theBBC.[2]
Griffiths became chairman of the Manchester Left Club, and the editor of theLabour Party'sNorthern Voice newspaper. Gradually he tired of political journalism, began writing plays, and was eventually commissioned byTony Garnett to provide a script forThe Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964–70). The play, "The Love Maniac", was about a teacher, but even though Garnett took the commission with him when he moved toLondon Weekend Television and formed Kestrel Productions, it was never produced.[3]
Buoyed by Garnett's enthusiasm and influenced by theParis events of May 1968, he wroteOccupations, a stage play about the Italian CommunistAntonio Gramsci and the Fiatfactory occupations of 1920s Italy.[4] The play had been submitted to theRoyal Shakespeare Company (RSC) as early as 1964, but had then been rejected as being "too controversial".[5] Following its premiere in Manchester the previous year,[6] the eventual RSC production in 1971 ofOccupations, Griffiths first full-length stage play,[6] was directed byBuzz Goodbody. Intending to affect "bourgeois theatre" with his viewpoint, Griffiths described his approach as being "committed to analysingMarxism and to condemnStalinism without discrediting socialism in the eyes of the world".[5]
The play soon brought him to the attention ofKenneth Tynan, the literary manager of theNational Theatre Company who promptly commissioned Griffiths to write the play that becameThe Party.[3] This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic directorLaurence Olivier in his last stage role as the GlaswegianTrotskyist John Tagg.[4] Griffiths had by now begun to write television plays, such as "All Good Men" (Play for Today, BBC, 31 January 1974) and "Through the Night" (2 December 1975).[7][8] Influenced by the experience of his wife, the latter is concerned with a woman's treatment for breast cancer.[8] In between these two plays came "Absolute Beginners" (BBC, 19 April 1974), in the seriesFall of Eagles, which presents a version of events in 1903 involvingLenin andTrotsky.[9] He developed a series about parliamentary democracy,Bill Brand, which was first shown byITV in the summer of 1976.[10]
Despite his considerable success in the theatre, he said of his work as a television dramatist in 1976: "I simply cannot understand socialist playwrights who do not devote most of their time to television... [t]hat if for everySweeney that went out, aBill Brand went out, there would be a real struggle for the popular imagination... [a]nd people would be free to make liberating choices about where reality lies."[3]
In the meantime, Griffiths had continued to write for the theatre withComedians commissioned by theNottingham Playhouse. The premiere production of the play was directed byRichard Eyre, then artistic director of the Nottingham theatre, and was first performed on 20 February 1975.[11]Comedians is set in a Manchester night-school, where a group of budding comics gather for a final briefing before performing to an agent from London. The play is set in real time, i.e. as the real time is 7.27, the clock on the wall of the school room also says 7.27. It subsequently transferred to Broadway, and was later adapted for television by Eyre while he was responsible forPlay for Today.[12][13]
Griffiths' reputation at the time was such thatWarren Beatty asked him to write a screenplay for a project about the US revolutionaryJohn Reed, which eventually became the Oscar-winning filmReds (1981), but Griffiths departed from the project before the script was completed and estimated that he had written only 45% of the script for the finished film.[4]
Griffiths continued to work in the theatre, gaining success with the touring production ofOi for England (ITV, 17 April 1982). His television play,Country (BBC, 20 October 1981), set just before the Labour victory at the1945 general election is "a not wholly unsympathetic study of a Tory family".[4] He wrote the television serial,The Last Place on Earth (ITV, 1985), and the screenplay forFatherland (1986) for directorKen Loach.[14] He created a screen adaptation in 1981 forD.H. Lawrence's novelSons and Lovers and in 1990,Piano, a stage version of a 1977 film itself based onAnton Chekov's play,Platonov.[2]
Griffiths'sFood for Ravens (BBC, 15 November 1997), was commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary ofAneurin Bevan's birth, but at one point the BBC decided not to network the play, and instead restrict it toWales. Only a newspaper campaign led by Griffiths and the leading actorBrian Cox caused the BBC to relent, and it was finally shown in a late-night slot onBBC2.[4]
In November 2008 Griffiths participated in a discussion on "The Writer and Revolution" with theWorld Socialist Web Site's arts editorDavid Walsh at the University of Manchester.[15] In 2009 he completed his last play,A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine.[16]
Griffiths participated in theBush Theatre's 2011 projectSixty-Six Books, for which he wrote a piece based on the book ofHabakkuk from theKing James Bible.[17]
In 1960, Griffiths married Janice Stansfield; the couple had three children and were married until her death in an aviation accident in Cuba in 1977.[1] Griffiths married Gill Cliff in 1992.[1][2] He lived inBoston Spa.[1]
Griffiths died from heart failure at his home on 29 March 2024, six days before his 89th birthday.[1][2]
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