Brenton, Howard
Brenton, Howard ( 1942 – ),playwright born in Portsmouth, educated at Chichester High School and Cambridge. His father was a policeman who later became a Methodist minister in Yorkshire. Coppers and clergy feature heavily in many of the short Brenton plays which powered the London fringe in the early 1970s. An avowed socialist slightly adrift since the collapse of communism, Brenton is a unique and powerful voice whose plays combine jagged writing with raw, Jacobean theatricality. His first full-scale Royal Court play Magnificence ( 1973 ) was followed by a collaboration with David Hare , Brassneck ( 1973 ), The Churchill Play ( 1974 ), in which the great leader rose from his own catafalque in a grim new Britain, and four controversial successes at the National Theatre : Weapons of Happiness ( 1976 ); a new version of Brecht 's Galileo; The Romans in Britain ( 1980 ),...
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