biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1934– )
|
| biography:
| Playwright, actor, and director, born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, N England, UK. He came to prominence as a writer and performer in Beyond the Fringe, a revue performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960, and wrote a television sketch show, On the Margin (1966), before his first stage play, Forty Years On (1968) with John Gielgud in the lead. Despite his own self-effacing qualities, he has remained in the public eye. A great deal of his writing is political comedy, a number of plays displaying a preoccupation with British institutions. There is an ambitious treatment of monarchy in The Madness of George III (1991, film 1995). Other plays include Enjoy (1980), Kafka's Dick (1986), and Single Spies (1988). He has also written much for television, including An Englishman Abroad (1983), The Insurance Man (1986), Talking Heads (1988, adapted for the stage in 1992), a series of six monologues related to his northern, working-class roots, and the documentary Portrait or Bust (1994). The autobiographical Writing Home appeared in 1994, and in 1999 his short story, The Lady in The Van, also based on an autobiographical incident, was staged. |
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