The Blinding Light
The Blinding Light
Howard Brenton
Abandoning theatre, living a life of squalid splendour, August Strindberg practises alchemy. In his hotel room, he attempts to make gold by finding the philosopher’s stone, the secret of creation. As his grasp on reality weakens, his first two wives visit him to bring him to his senses. But their interventions spin out of control.
For four years in fin-de-siècle Paris, Europe’s most famous playwright vanished. Most people thought he had gone insane. When he reappeared, his new plays changed theatre forever.
Available
2017
978-1-84842-706-8
Drama
Nick Hern Books
Howard Brenton
Howard Brenton is a British playwright and screenwriter well celebrated in the United Kingdom. In the early years of his career, Brenton joined the Brighton Combination as well as the Portable Theatre where he wrote such plays as Christie In Love and Fruit. From there, he continued to write plays Winter, Wesley, How Beautiful With Badges and A Sky Blue-Life among others, all before the age of 30. In 1973, Brenton was commissioned by Richard Eyre to write something “big” for Nottingham Playhouse. This became Brassneck and The Churchill Play, a commentary on the conflict between liberty and security that had a dead Churchill rising from his resting place in Westminster Hall as the opening scene.
Brenton’s next big success, Weapons of Happiness, was commissioned by the National Theatre as the first play to be produced at their new location on the South Bank, where the theatre still stands today. His work The Romans in Britain (once again at the National Theatre) gained traction when a woman named Mary Whitehouse prosecuted the shows director because of a graphic scene depicting an attempted rape of a priest. The prosecution was ultimately withdrawn when it was clear it would not succeed. He wrote 13 episodes for the BBC1 drama Spooks and in 2010, Anne Boleyn played at Shakespear’s Globe and won Best New Play at the WhatsOnStage Theatregoers Choice Awards 2011.