Snoo Wilson
Encyclopedia
Snoo Wilson, born Andrew James Wilson, is an English playwright, screenwriter and director. His early plays such as Blow-Job (1971) were overtly political, often combining harsh social comment with comedy. In his later works he has moved away from purely political themes, embracing a range of surrealist, magical, philosophical and comic subjects.
After studying literature at the University of East Anglia
, Wilson began his writing career in 1969. He began to build his reputation with a series of plays and screenplays in the early 1970s and served as dramaturge
to the Royal Shakespeare Company
. In 1978, his surrealist play The Glad Hand attracted favourable notice, as did his 1994 play, Darwin's Flood. He also wrote several novels and held teaching positions.
, England, the son of two teachers: Leslie Wilson and his wife Pamela Mary née Boyle. He was educated at Bradfield College
and University of East Anglia
(UEA), graduating with a degree in American and English Literature in 1969. At UEA, he was one of the students of Lorna Sage
. Wilson's early plays, the one-act Girl Mas as Pigs and the two-act Ella Daybellfesse's Machine, were first produced at UEA in, respectively, June and November 1967. Two years later, a second one-act play, Between the Acts, was first produced in Canterbury
, at the University of Kent
.
In 1969, Wilson embarked on a writing career. Together with Tony Bicat and David Hare
, Wilson founded the Portable Theatre Company (Brighton and London) and was its associate director from 1970 to 1975. His plays from these years included four one-act works, Charles the Martyr (1970), Device of Angels (1970), Pericles, The Mean Knight (1970) and Reason (1972), most of which dealt with overtly political subjects.
pig farm, believes that pigs are about to take over the world. The play was described by the critic Michael Billington
as a "savage and disenchanted portrait of rural life". Blow-Job is a political exploration of urban violence during which a quantity of raw meat is thrown on stage to simulate the corpse of an Alsatian dog that has just been blown up. With some reservations, Irving Wardle
praised the piece in The Times
for its "authentic sense of horror … its intermingling of physical outrage and savage farce."
In Wilson's 1973 full-length play, The Pleasure Principle, comedy, politics and social comment were again combined, but to less savage effect. Billington wrote, "On the one hand it is a strenuous indictment of ownership, property, greed and personal exploitation: on the other, it is a madhouse extravaganza that operates on the good old comic principle of always putting a bomb under the audience's expectations." In The Observer
, Robert Cushman wrote, "This is one of the best plays of the seventies' heartless school; Coward
's Design for Living
is a fount of charity by comparison." Other full-length plays of this period were Vampire (1973) and The Beast (1974). Wilson's screenplays and teleplays included Sunday for Seven Days (1971), The Good Life (1971), More About the Universe (1972), Swamp Music (1973), The Barium Meal (1974), The Trip to Jerusalem (1974), Don't Make Waves (1975), and A Greenish Man (1979). In 1975 and 1976, Wilson was dramaturge
to the Royal Shakespeare Company
(RSC). In 1976 he married the journalist Ann McFerran, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. In the same year, he became script editor of the BBC
television anthology drama series, Play for Today
.
In 1978, The Glad Hand, in which a South African tycoon employs a troupe of actors and sails an oil tanker through the Bermuda Triangle
, hoping to conjure up the Anti-Christ and kill him in a Wild West gunfight, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre
and won the John Whiting Award
. Cushman wrote, "Sceptics like me have sometimes fallen foul of Mr Wilson's concern with the occult; here he makes it easy for us. Like Tom Stoppard
he sets up impossible situations and explains them; and his wit in this piece has a Stoppardian exhilaration." Later that year, Wilson was appointed Henfield Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
, and he often writes about the arcane, the occult, and the irrational, whether in the Gothic intrigues of Vampire (1973), the space aliens of Moonshine (1999), or the duelling wizards of The Number of the Beast (1982). Commenting on his interest in magical subjects, Wilson said, "It's only because people like to think that the material world is at base solid that they have to think of magic as a separate category of events. … The stage is very near magic in what it does and it's also composed of finally the same thing, which is sort of people and tinsel, which is all magic really is." On another occasion, Wilson commented, "I prefer to write for theatre because it can create the oldest magic. The question of its relevance is only asked by passive incredulous individuals who cannot swallow the idea that perception is an act."
Wilson has often sought to fuse social criticism with a surrealistic, comic, style. He said in 1978, "I think, well, you have to laugh, don't you? With all the dreadful, dreadful things going on I think of that as my way of keeping a grasp on my own sensibilities. In fact, it's the only way I have." In Darwin's Flood (1994), Charles Darwin
is visited on the eve of his death by his fascistic sister Elizabeth, her feckless husband Bernard, a dominatrix Mary Magdalene
, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
, and Jesus
in the guise of an Irish long-distance bicyclist who quickly seduces Darwin's wife, Emma. Meanwhile, a mammoth Ark breaks through the lawn of Darwin's backyard. The director, Simon Stokes, commented that there is a serious message behind such extravagances: "In a very humorous way the play is also asking: What if God does exist, and put the fossils in the rocks? What if he did plant the evidence?"
A departure from Wilson's usual theatrical genres was in 1986, when he wrote a new libretto for Offenbach
's Orpheus in the Underworld
for the English National Opera
. The reviews concentrated on the décor by Gerald Scarfe
and the production by David Pountney
, both of which strongly divided opinion; Wilson's work escaped the sharp censure directed at his colleagues, and his device of turning the bossy character "Public Opinion" into a parody of the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher
, was favourably remarked upon.
Wilson's later academic posts have included those of US Bicentennial Fellow in Playwriting (1981–82) and Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of California at San Diego (1987). Of his non-theatre works, his 1984 novel, Spaceache, was described by Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer as "a dystopian fantasy of a grim and ruthless high-technology low-competence future". John Melmoth, the reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement
, wrote that Wilson scored in his "nearness to the knuckle … a quirky, unpleasant and emetic sense of humour."
After studying literature at the University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
, Wilson began his writing career in 1969. He began to build his reputation with a series of plays and screenplays in the early 1970s and served as dramaturge
Dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a professional position within a theatre or opera company that deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas...
to the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The 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...
. In 1978, his surrealist play The Glad Hand attracted favourable notice, as did his 1994 play, Darwin's Flood. He also wrote several novels and held teaching positions.
Early years
Wilson was born in ReadingReading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
, England, the son of two teachers: Leslie Wilson and his wife Pamela Mary née Boyle. He was educated at Bradfield College
Bradfield College
Bradfield College is a coeducational independent school located in the small village of Bradfield in the English county of Berkshire.The college was founded in 1850 by Thomas Stevens, Rector and Lord of the Manor of Bradfield...
and University of East Anglia
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...
(UEA), graduating with a degree in American and English Literature in 1969. At UEA, he was one of the students of Lorna Sage
Lorna Sage
Lorna Sage was a Welsh-born academic, as well as an award-winning literary critic and author, known widely for her contribution to the consideration of women's writing.-Biography:...
. Wilson's early plays, the one-act Girl Mas as Pigs and the two-act Ella Daybellfesse's Machine, were first produced at UEA in, respectively, June and November 1967. Two years later, a second one-act play, Between the Acts, was first produced in Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
, at the University of Kent
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
.
In 1969, Wilson embarked on a writing career. Together with Tony Bicat and David Hare
David Hare (dramatist)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...
, Wilson founded the Portable Theatre Company (Brighton and London) and was its associate director from 1970 to 1975. His plays from these years included four one-act works, Charles the Martyr (1970), Device of Angels (1970), Pericles, The Mean Knight (1970) and Reason (1972), most of which dealt with overtly political subjects.
1970s
Wilson's first full-length works to attract notice were Pignight and Blow-Job, both produced in 1971. Pignight, the first of his own plays that Wilson directed, is a nightmarish fantasy about a mentally disturbed soldier, who, while on a LincolnshireLincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
pig farm, believes that pigs are about to take over the world. The play was described by the critic Michael Billington
Michael Billington
Michael Billington may refer to:* Michael Billington , British film and television actor* Michael Billington , drama critic of The Guardian* Michael Billington , author and activist in the LaRouche movement...
as a "savage and disenchanted portrait of rural life". Blow-Job is a political exploration of urban violence during which a quantity of raw meat is thrown on stage to simulate the corpse of an Alsatian dog that has just been blown up. With some reservations, Irving Wardle
Irving Wardle
John Irving Wardle is an English writer and theatre critic.He was born on 20 July 1929 in Manchester, Lancashire, the son of John Wardle and his wife Nellie . His father was drama critic on the Bolton Evening News, and a regular performer at the Bolton Little Theatre...
praised the piece in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
for its "authentic sense of horror … its intermingling of physical outrage and savage farce."
In Wilson's 1973 full-length play, The Pleasure Principle, comedy, politics and social comment were again combined, but to less savage effect. Billington wrote, "On the one hand it is a strenuous indictment of ownership, property, greed and personal exploitation: on the other, it is a madhouse extravaganza that operates on the good old comic principle of always putting a bomb under the audience's expectations." In The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, Robert Cushman wrote, "This is one of the best plays of the seventies' heartless school; Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's Design for Living
Design for Living
Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué...
is a fount of charity by comparison." Other full-length plays of this period were Vampire (1973) and The Beast (1974). Wilson's screenplays and teleplays included Sunday for Seven Days (1971), The Good Life (1971), More About the Universe (1972), Swamp Music (1973), The Barium Meal (1974), The Trip to Jerusalem (1974), Don't Make Waves (1975), and A Greenish Man (1979). In 1975 and 1976, Wilson was dramaturge
Dramaturge
A dramaturge or dramaturg is a professional position within a theatre or opera company that deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas...
to the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The 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...
(RSC). In 1976 he married the journalist Ann McFerran, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. In the same year, he became script editor of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television anthology drama series, Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
.
In 1978, The Glad Hand, in which a South African tycoon employs a troupe of actors and sails an oil tanker through the Bermuda Triangle
Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances....
, hoping to conjure up the Anti-Christ and kill him in a Wild West gunfight, premiered at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
and won the John Whiting Award
John Whiting Award
The John Whiting Award is awarded annually to a British or Commonwealth playwright who, in the opinion of a consortium of UK theatres, shows a new and distinctive development in dramatic writing with particular relevance to contemporary society...
. Cushman wrote, "Sceptics like me have sometimes fallen foul of Mr Wilson's concern with the occult; here he makes it easy for us. Like Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
he sets up impossible situations and explains them; and his wit in this piece has a Stoppardian exhilaration." Later that year, Wilson was appointed Henfield Fellow at the University of East Anglia.
Later work
Wilson's style has grown away from the overtly political manner of his contemporaries David Hare and Howard BrentonHoward Brenton
-Early years:Brenton was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of Methodist minister Donald Henry Brenton and his wife Rose Lilian . He was educated at Chichester High School For Boys and read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1964 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal...
, and he often writes about the arcane, the occult, and the irrational, whether in the Gothic intrigues of Vampire (1973), the space aliens of Moonshine (1999), or the duelling wizards of The Number of the Beast (1982). Commenting on his interest in magical subjects, Wilson said, "It's only because people like to think that the material world is at base solid that they have to think of magic as a separate category of events. … The stage is very near magic in what it does and it's also composed of finally the same thing, which is sort of people and tinsel, which is all magic really is." On another occasion, Wilson commented, "I prefer to write for theatre because it can create the oldest magic. The question of its relevance is only asked by passive incredulous individuals who cannot swallow the idea that perception is an act."
Wilson has often sought to fuse social criticism with a surrealistic, comic, style. He said in 1978, "I think, well, you have to laugh, don't you? With all the dreadful, dreadful things going on I think of that as my way of keeping a grasp on my own sensibilities. In fact, it's the only way I have." In Darwin's Flood (1994), Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
is visited on the eve of his death by his fascistic sister Elizabeth, her feckless husband Bernard, a dominatrix Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...
, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, and Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
in the guise of an Irish long-distance bicyclist who quickly seduces Darwin's wife, Emma. Meanwhile, a mammoth Ark breaks through the lawn of Darwin's backyard. The director, Simon Stokes, commented that there is a serious message behind such extravagances: "In a very humorous way the play is also asking: What if God does exist, and put the fossils in the rocks? What if he did plant the evidence?"
A departure from Wilson's usual theatrical genres was in 1986, when he wrote a new libretto for Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's Orpheus in the Underworld
Orpheus in the Underworld
Orphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....
for the English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
. The reviews concentrated on the décor by Gerald Scarfe
Gerald Scarfe
Gerald Anthony Scarfe, CBE, RDI, is an English cartoonist and illustrator. He worked as editorial cartoonist for The Sunday Times and illustrator for The New Yorker...
and the production by David Pountney
David Pountney
David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...
, both of which strongly divided opinion; Wilson's work escaped the sharp censure directed at his colleagues, and his device of turning the bossy character "Public Opinion" into a parody of the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, was favourably remarked upon.
Wilson's later academic posts have included those of US Bicentennial Fellow in Playwriting (1981–82) and Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of California at San Diego (1987). Of his non-theatre works, his 1984 novel, Spaceache, was described by Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer as "a dystopian fantasy of a grim and ruthless high-technology low-competence future". John Melmoth, the reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
, wrote that Wilson scored in his "nearness to the knuckle … a quirky, unpleasant and emetic sense of humour."
Selected plays
- Charles the Martyr (1970)
- Device of Angels (1970)
- Pericles, The Mean Knight (1970)
- Pignight (1971)
- Blow-Job (1971)
- Reason (1972)
- The Pleasure Principle: The Politics of Love, The Capital of Emotion (1973)
- Vampire (1973)
- The Glad Hand (1978)
- The Number of the Beast (1982; revised version of The Beast, 1974)
- Flaming Bodies (1983)
- 80 Days (1988; with music by Ray DaviesRay DaviesRay Davies, CBE is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for the Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave...
) - More Light (1991)
- Darwin's Flood (1994)
- HRH (1997)
- Sabina (1998)
- Moonshine (1999)
- Love Song of the Electric Bear (2003)
Selected screenplays, TV and radio
- Sunday for Seven Days (1971)
- The Good Life (1971)
- More About the Universe (1972)
- Swamp Music (1973; episode of Thirty-Minute Theatre TV series)
- The Barium Meal (1974)
- The Trip to Jerusalem (1974)
- Don't Make Waves (1975)
- A Greenish Man (1979; episode of The Other Side TV series)
- ShadeyShadeyShadey is a 1985 British comedy film directed by Philip Saville and starring Antony Sher, Billie Whitelaw and Patrick Macnee. A man with clairvoyant qualities is recruited by British intelligence for a secret mission.-Cast:* Antony Sher - Oliver Shadey...
(1985) - Hippomania (2004 radio play)
- EichmannEichmann (film)Eichmann is a biographical film detailing the interrogation of Otto Adolf Eichmann. Directed by Robert Young, the film stars Thomas Kretschmann as Eichmann and Troy Garity as Eichmann's Israeli interrogator, Avner Less...
(2007)
Novels
- Spaceache (1984)
- Inside Babel (1985)
- I, Crowley: Almost the Last Confession of the Beast 666 (1999)
- The Works of Melmont (2004)
Further reading
- Bierman, James. "Enfant Terrible of the English Stage." Modern Drama. v. 24 (Dec. 1981): 424-435.
- Coe, Ada. "From Surrealism to Snoorealism: the Theatre of Snoo Wilson", New Theatre Quarterly 5.17 (1989): 73.
- Dietrich, Dawn. "Snoo Wilson." In British Playwrights, 1956-. Ed. William W. Demastes. Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-313-28759-7.
- Wilson, Snoo. Snoo Wilson: Plays. 1. London: Methuen Drama, 1999.