The Blinding Light

About Howard Brenton

Howard Brenton was born in Portsmouth in 1942. His many plays include Christie in Love (Portable Theatre 1969); Revenge (Theatre Upstairs 1969); Magnificence (Royal Court Theatre1973); The Churchill Play (Nottingham Playhouse 1974 and twice revived by the RSC 1978 and 1988); Bloody Poetry (FocoNovo 1984 and Royal Court Theatre 1987); Weapons of Happiness (National Theatre Evening Standard Award 1976); Epsom Downs (Joint Stock Theatre 1977); Sore Throats (RSC1978); The Romans in Britain (National Theatre 1980 revived at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield 2006); Thirteenth Night (RSC1981); The Genius (1983) Greenland (1988) and Berlin Bertie (1992) all presented by the Royal Court; Kits Play (RADA Jerwood Theatre 2000); Paul (National Theatre 2005); In Extremis (Shakespeares Globe 2006 and 2007); Never So Good (National Theatre 2008); The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists adapted from the novel by Robert Tressell (Liverpool Everyman and Chichester Festival Theatre 2010); Anne Boleyn (Shakespeares Globe 2010 and 2011); 55 Days (Hampstead Theatre 2012); #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei (Hampstead Theatre 2013); The Guffin (NT Connections 2013); Drawing the Line (Hampstead Theatre 2013); Doctor Scroggy's War (Shakespeare's Globe 2014); Lawrence After Arabia (Hampstead Theatre 2016); The Blinding Light (Jermyn Street Theatre 2017) The Shadow Factory (NST City Southampton 2018) Jude (Hampstead Theatre 2019) and Cancelling Socrates (Jermyn Street Theatre London 2022). Collaborations with other writers include Brassneck (with David Hare Nottingham Playhouse 1972); Pravda (with David Hare National Theatre Evening Standard Award 1985) and Moscow Gold (with Tariq Ali RSC 1990). Versions of classics include The Life of Galileo (1980) and Danton's Death (1982) both for the National Theatre; Goethe's Faust (1995/6) for the RSC; a new version of Danton's Death for the National Theatre (2010); and versions of Strindberg's Dances of Death (Gate Theatre 2013) Miss Julie (Theatre by the Lake Keswick & Jermyn Street Theatre London 2017) and Creditors (Theatre by the Lake Keswick & Jermyn Street Theatre London 2019). He wrote thirteen episodes of the BBC1 drama series Spooks (200105 BAFTA Best Drama Series 2003).