Peter Barnes
Encyclopedia
Peter Barnes was an English
Olivier Award
-winning playwright
and screenwriter
. His most famous work is the play The Ruling Class
, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole
received an Oscar
nomination.
Barnes was educated at Marling School
in Stroud, Gloucestershire
and performed his national service
with the Royal Air Force
. After this he spent a short period working for London County Council
.
Bored with his job, Barnes took a correspondence course in theology
. It was at this time that he began to visit the British Museum reading room
, which he used as an office on a daily basis. During this period he worked as a film critic, story editor, and a screenwriter. He achieved critical and box-office success with his baroque
comedy The Ruling Class (1968), which debuted at the Nottingham
Playhouse. The play was notorious for its anti-naturalistic
approach, unusual in theatre
at the time. Critic Harold Hobson
deemed it to be one of the best first plays of its generation. Following a successful three-month run in the West End
, Barnes adapted the play for the 1972 film of the same name, which featured a highly acclaimed performance by Peter O'Toole.
's Enchanted April
earned him a nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar
in 1992. He lost out to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
's treatment of Howards End
. He also wrote several mini-series for U.S. television, including Arabian Nights and Noah's Ark. For BBC Radio 3
he wrote a series of monologues entitled Barnes's People, for which he attracted a large number of well known actors: Laurence Olivier
, John Gielgud
, Alec Guinness
, Peggy Ashcroft
, Judi Dench
, and Ian McKellen
.
Barnes did carry on writing his historical comedies throughout the 1990s. These include Sunsets and Glories
(1990), Dreaming (1999), and Jubilee (2001).
Barnes's second wife, Christie, gave birth to his first daughter in 2000 when he was 69. Barnes, who never received much mainstream media attention for his plays, briefly became a tabloid
obsession in 2002 when his wife gave birth again, this time to triplets
.
The last play that Barnes completed was Babies, which is based on his experiences as an elderly father. It is currently being adapted for British TV.
Barnes died in July 2004 of a stroke
.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Olivier Award
Laurence Olivier Awards
The Laurence Olivier Award is presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre. Named after the renowned British actor Laurence Olivier, they are given for West End shows and other productions staged in London...
-winning playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. His most famous work is the play The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class
The Ruling Class is a 1972 British black comedy film. It is an adaptation of Peter Barnes' satirical stage play which tells the story of a paranoid schizophrenic British nobleman who inherits a peerage. The film costars Alastair Sim, William Mervyn, Coral Browne, Harry Andrews, Carolyn Seymour,...
, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole
Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O'Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most...
received an Oscar
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
nomination.
Barnes was educated at Marling School
Marling School
Marling School is a grammar school for boys located in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, next to its sister school, Stroud High School. It is on the Cainscross Road, the main route out of Stroud towards the M5....
in Stroud, Gloucestershire
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Stroud is a market town and civil parish in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District.Situated below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills at the meeting point of the Five Valleys, the town is noted for its steep streets and cafe culture...
and performed his national service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
with the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
. After this he spent a short period working for London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
.
Bored with his job, Barnes took a correspondence course in theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
. It was at this time that he began to visit the British Museum reading room
British Museum Reading Room
The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room remains in its original form inside...
, which he used as an office on a daily basis. During this period he worked as a film critic, story editor, and a screenwriter. He achieved critical and box-office success with his baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
comedy The Ruling Class (1968), which debuted at the Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
Playhouse. The play was notorious for its anti-naturalistic
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
approach, unusual in theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
at the time. Critic Harold Hobson
Harold Hobson
Sir Harold Hobson was an influential English drama critic and author.He was born in Thorpe Hesley near Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England and read History at Oxford University. He was an assistant literary editor for the Sunday Times from 1944 and later became its drama critic...
deemed it to be one of the best first plays of its generation. Following a successful three-month run in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, Barnes adapted the play for the 1972 film of the same name, which featured a highly acclaimed performance by Peter O'Toole.
Mature works
Following his initial success, Barnes wrote a series of plays offering apocalyptic visions of various periods in history:- Leonardo's Last Supper (1969) portrayed Leonardo da VinciLeonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
being prematurely declared dead, with his subsequent "resurrection" in a filthy charnel-house. - The Bewitched (1974), which he produced with the RSCRoyal Shakespeare CompanyThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, showed the SpanishSpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
state attempting to produce an heir for Carlos IICharles II of SpainCharles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...
, whom Barnes portrayed as being impotent and imbecile. - Laughter! (1978) was his most controversial work, a double-bill that jumped from the reign of Ivan the TerribleIvan IV of RussiaIvan IV Vasilyevich , known in English as Ivan the Terrible , was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 until his death. His long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost one billion acres,...
to a satire based on the tedious bureaucracy required to sustain AuschwitzAuschwitz concentration campConcentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
. - Red NosesRed NosesRed Noses is a comedy about the black death by Peter Barnes, first staged at Barbican Theatre in 1985. It depicted a sprightly priest, originally played by Antony Sher, who travelled around the plague-affected villages of 14th century France with a band of fools, known as God's Zanies, offering...
(1985) depicts a sprightly priest, originally played by Antony SherAntony SherSir Antony Sher, KBE is a double Olivier Award winning South African-born British actor, writer, theatre director and painter.- Early years :...
, who travelled around the plagueBubonic plaguePlague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
-affected villages of 14th century FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
with a band of fools, known as God's Zanies, offering holy assistance. It was for this play that Barnes won his Olivier award.
Later life
In his later years Barnes turned his attention more in the direction of films, radio, and television. His screenplay for Elizabeth von ArnimElizabeth von Arnim
Elizabeth von Arnim , born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist. By marriage she became Gräfin von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and by a second marriage, Countess Russell...
's Enchanted April
Enchanted April
Enchanted April is the second film adaptation Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel, The Enchanted April. The novel was adapted as a Broadway play in 1925, and as an RKO Radio film in 1935 - both using the same title as the novel. The 1992 film release received several Golden Globe and Academy Award...
earned him a nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar
Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
in 1992. He lost out to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE is a Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant...
's treatment of Howards End
Howards End (film)
Howards End is a 1992 film based upon the novel of the same title by E. M. Forster , a story of class relations in turn-of-the-20th-century England...
. He also wrote several mini-series for U.S. television, including Arabian Nights and Noah's Ark. For BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...
he wrote a series of monologues entitled Barnes's People, for which he attracted a large number of well known actors: Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...
, Peggy Ashcroft
Peggy Ashcroft
Dame Peggy Ashcroft, DBE was an English actress.-Early years:Born as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft in Croydon, Ashcroft attended the Woodford School, Croydon and the Central School of Speech and Drama...
, Judi Dench
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...
, and Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
.
Barnes did carry on writing his historical comedies throughout the 1990s. These include Sunsets and Glories
Sunsets and Glories
A play by noted playwright and Academy Award nominated screenwriter Peter Barnes. The play is based on the brief reign of Pope Celestine V....
(1990), Dreaming (1999), and Jubilee (2001).
Barnes's second wife, Christie, gave birth to his first daughter in 2000 when he was 69. Barnes, who never received much mainstream media attention for his plays, briefly became a tabloid
Tabloid journalism
Tabloid journalism tends to emphasize topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, gossip columns about the personal lives of celebrities and sports stars, and junk food news...
obsession in 2002 when his wife gave birth again, this time to triplets
Multiple birth
A multiple birth occurs when more than one fetus is carried to term in a single pregnancy. Different names for multiple births are used, depending on the number of offspring. Common multiples are two and three, known as twins and triplets...
.
The last play that Barnes completed was Babies, which is based on his experiences as an elderly father. It is currently being adapted for British TV.
Barnes died in July 2004 of a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
.