Dennis Potter, author of plays including Blue Remembered Hills, Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote, for Nigel Barton. Photo / NZME
Dennis Potter, author of plays including Blue Remembered Hills, Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote, for Nigel Barton. Photo / NZME
Since our Play Reading Group read Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills which had us in fits of laughter before stunning us with a brutal reality, I've been doing a little more research into the man and his plays.
I believe that Blue Remembered Hills was semi-autobiographical, being set in theForest of Dean, his childhood home. I'd like to access Stand Up, Nigel Barton if I can, as it reflects what must have been a lot of Dennis Potter's experiences.
A coal miner's son, Dennis Potter won a scholarship to a private grammar school and later a scholarship to study at Oxford University. Laudable you would think, but in the Nigel Barton plays (there are two of them) the main character encounters suspicion from the locals who believe that he's betraying his working-class roots.
The sequel to Stand Up, Nigel Barton is Vote, Vote, Vote, For Nigel Barton, which is based on Potter's experiences standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament. Potter became disillusioned with party politics and didn't enter that particular arena again.
As well as writing plays for television and the stage Dennis Potter wrote film scripts and novels.
He had a very successful career despite being troubled by ill health. Sadly, he lost his life to cancer aged only 59 in 1994, but his thought-provoking plays live on.
