Tony Winner Alan Bennett
Author of The Madness of King George and The History Boys began with Take a Pew, Talking Heads and An Englishman Abroad
Since 1960 playwright Alan Bennett has delighted audiences and actors from Monty Python alumni to Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Nigel Hawthorne.
It all began with 1960's university revue Beyond the Fringe modern incarnation to Flanders and Swann - a British revue that gently satirized all things British from seduction in The Song of Reproduction to animals, the most famed refrain being The Hippopotamus.
Beyond the Fringe was a tad more subtle, a comedic intelligentsia, as lads Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett, went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival armed with pianoforte, excellent good sketches, and quadruple comedic intentions.
They too, lambasted all things British from military strategy versus a cup of tea in Aftermyth of War to civilized discussion of The Great Hereafter in The End of the World .
Alan Bennett's immortal comedy aria Take A Pew, features Brother Bennett pontificating about how one can never quite get the 'last bit out of the corner' in the sardine can of life.
The rest, they snicker, is Brit-com history.
Bennett, who has become of one England's finest author/playwrights, has been writing about that 'last bit out of the corner' these 46 years on - magnificence within the mundane.
Bennett wrote many television plays through the 60s to the 90s, most notably Talking Heads and An Englishman Abroad.
Screenplays include Joe Orton biopic Prick Up Your Ears, (with TV director/creative colleague Stephen Frears) A Private Function starring Monty Python alumnus Michael Palin and Dame Maggie Smith, plus Monty Python vehicles The Secret Policeman's Ball, and The Secret Policeman's Other Ball.
One of Bennett's finest screen adaptations is
The Madness of King George based on his play The Madness of King George III which premiered at England's National Theatre in 1991. The story deals a demented King George III and Bennett likens it to 'domestic tragedy' or 'Mr. and Mrs. King Lear'.
Bennett and late actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne who played King George on stage and screen, won Oscar nominations for the film version, directed by current National Theatre artistic director Nicholas Hynter.
Hynter and Bennett are once again enjoying success with The History Boys for which Bennett recently won the Tony award for Best Play and Hynter, Best Director.
Currently at New York's
Broadhurst Theatre,The History Boys has been extended to October and a recreated version directed by Simon Cox, is also coming to The Rep/ aka Birmingham Repertory Theatre, in England this August featuring actor Anton Rodgers,as eccentric English instructor Hector.
In The History Boys, Bennett delves into schoolboy days past crafting a remarkable piece about the British institution of education and teaching strategy, juxtaposed with eight rambunctious, sexually curious, sixth-form lads, and the question of 'absolute historical truth.'
Bennett recently adapted The History Boys directed by Hynter, for film as they did with The Madness of King George. The 2006 film stars the original cast from the National Theatre production including Tony winners Richard Griffiths (Lead Actor) and Frances De Le Tour (Featured Actress). The result can only be 'six of the best'-
Oscar nods all around.
