The play that changed my life: ‘Comedians got me the job running the National Theatre’
Our series on theatrical discoveries continues with Trevor Griffiths’ incandescent examination of laughter and prejudice, remembered by the director who first put it on
April 2024
Trevor Griffiths: Mancunian Marxist whose political plays deserve revival
Griffiths, who has died aged 88, explored the conflict between reform and revolution in plays and scripts from the film Reds to dramas such as Occupations, The Party and Comedians
July 2020
Forgotten plays
Forgotten Plays: No 6 – Occupations (1970) by Trevor Griffiths
The collapse of the 1968 protests left this incisive political dramatist searching for answers – and his response delved brilliantly into the dilemmas of revolution
September 2019
The 10 best plays about politics
As Hansard opens at the National Theatre and drama heats up in Westminster, our critic picks his favourite political theatre
January 2017
A brush with greatness
The day Laurence Olivier played the supporting role to my lead
David Bradley recalls a run-through as an understudy, playing opposite Laurence Olivier in The Party
August 2016
State-of-the-nation dramas can’t capture the lost state of Britain today
Mark Lawson
John Osborne’s classic allegory The Entertainer is back. But the UK is now so fragmented that no modern playwright could pen a drama to sum up who we are
July 2016
The week in books
Literature can do power struggles too
Lord of the Flies, A Very British Coup, House of Cards … fiction can almost match reality when it comes to political intrigue
February 2015
Comedians: racist and sexist standups who messed with audiences’ minds
Trevor Griffiths’s 1975 play that ‘invited audiences to laugh, then punished them for doing so’ is 40 years old. Here, we look back at the show’s history with those who made it
May 2012
All Good Men/Thermidor – review
Seeing Trevor Griffith's All Good Men on the stage today makes one nostalgic for a time when television was unafraid to show serious political drama, writes Michael Billington
April 2010
Comedians
Octagon, Bolton David Thacker's revival of Trevor Griffiths's 1975 play Comedians comes steeped in the cigarette smoke and low expectations of northern clubland, writes Alfred Hickling
October 2009
Comedians, Life is a Dream, Endgame, The Birds
Comedians
September 2009
A New World: A Life of Thomas Paine, Alan Cumming: I Bought a Blue Car Today
A New World
October 2005
Age of reason
Dominic Dromgoole
They may look like Colonel Bloodknot and Mrs Bufton-Tufton, but the greying audiences the Arts Council worries about are good enough for me. By Dominic Dromgoole.
