Torben Betts
Encyclopedia
Torben Betts is an award-winning English playwright
and screenwriter
.
A consistently controversial dramatist, who has written heavily naturalistic plays as well as epic, poetic works, he has been hailed as a successor to writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn
, Edward Bond
and Howard Barker
. Michael Billington in a review for the Guardian described his 1999 play A Listening Heaven
'like the best work of Edward Albee
' and that it has 'an Eugene O'Neill
-like emotional force.' His plays are essentially tragic in nature, though they are all notable for their often excruciatingly uncomfortable comedy. Seeing something of himself in the young Betts, Ayckbourn invited him to be his resident dramatist at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1999.
Betts' play The Unconquered
, in a touring production by the Stellar Quines Theatre Company
, was Best New Play in the 2006-7 Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, beating Gregory Burke
's acclaimed Black Watch to the award. It then went to New York as part of the 2008 Brits-off-Broadway season.
The playwright and poet Liz Lochhead
has called him 'just about the most original and extraordinary writer of drama we have...a boldly visionary poet...a political Beckett...a flamingly original writer we ignore at our peril.' Time Out said he was 'an uncommonly talented playwright'. A critic in The Times
claimed he chose words with the 'precision of a Conrad or a Naipaul', while Mark Brown in the Daily Telegraph claims he has a 'profound and highly original theatrical voice.'
Despite this critical acclaim his plays are largely overlooked by the theatre establishment in the UK.
His latest play Muswell Hill opens at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre
in February 2012 (directed by Sam Walters
), while The Company Man, which starred Bruce Alexander
and Isla Blair
, played there to some acclaim during October 2010.
His version of Ernst Toller
's 1926 play Hinkemann (entitled Broken) will be produced in 2012 and directed by James Dacre
.
Downhill, his first full-length feature film, starts shooting in early 2012.
Beauty forged in darkness Review of The Unconquered, Glasgow Sunday Herald, 2007
Timely, well-crafted, and unforgettable Joyce MacMillan on The Unconquered, Scotsman, 2008
Questions of freedom, set in black and white Andrea Stevens on The Unconquered, New York Times, 2008
Rural idyll proves another lost Eden Review of Lie of the Land, Evening Standard, 2008
Lie of the Land Review in The Times, April 2009
The new Molière of the middle classes? Alfred Hickling on Clockwatching, Guardian, 2001
That's no lady, that's my wife Review of The Lunatic Queen and The Biggleswades, Observer, 2005
A new Dacre take on morality Michael Coveney in the Observer on Five Visions of the Faithful, 2004
Maggie and the kitchen sink Michael Billington in the Guardian on A Listening Heaven and Incarcerator, 2001
Incarcerator Review of Incarcerator in The Stage, May 2005
Do not look back Review of The Swing of Things, October 2007
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in the British Theatre Guide, October 2010
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in Whatsonstage, November 2010
Plays Two (Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Biggleswades, The Last Days of Desire) - Oberon Books, 2001
Plays Three (The Optimist, The Swing of Things, The Company Man) - Oberon Books, 2008
The Unconquered - Oberon Books, 2007 and 2008
The Error of their Ways - Oberon Books, 2007
Lie of the Land - Oberon Books, 2008
Muswell Hill - Oberon Books, 2012
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
.
A consistently controversial dramatist, who has written heavily naturalistic plays as well as epic, poetic works, he has been hailed as a successor to writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
, Edward Bond
Edward Bond
Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...
and Howard Barker
Howard Barker
Howard E. Barker is a British playwright.-The Theatre of Catastrophe :Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work...
. Michael Billington in a review for the Guardian described his 1999 play A Listening Heaven
A Listening Heaven
A Listening Heaven is a play for six actors written by the English dramatist Torben Betts.It is a domestic tragedy centring on the suicide of a young eco-warrior and the inability of his rather conservative, emotionally repressed family to cope with his death.The play was initially championed by...
'like the best work of Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
' and that it has 'an Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
-like emotional force.' His plays are essentially tragic in nature, though they are all notable for their often excruciatingly uncomfortable comedy. Seeing something of himself in the young Betts, Ayckbourn invited him to be his resident dramatist at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1999.
Betts' play The Unconquered
The Unconquered (play)
The Unconquered is a play for four actors by Torben Betts which premiered at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews in February 2007 before touring the United Kingdom It received critical acclaim and won the award for Best New Play at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, 2007...
, in a touring production by the Stellar Quines Theatre Company
Stellar Quines Theatre Company
Stellar Quines is a Scottish theatre company based in Edinburgh, Scotland.Stellar Quines Theatre Company was formed in 1993 to facilitate the creative work of women in Scottish theatre. It makes theatre that is driven by women and where women are at the forefront of all the creative roles...
, was Best New Play in the 2006-7 Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, beating Gregory Burke
Gregory Burke
Gregory Burke is a Scottish playwright from Rosyth, Fife, Scotland.-Life:His family moved to Gibraltar in 1979 and returned to Dunfermline in 1984. He attended St John's Primary in Rosyth, St Christopher's Middle School in Gibraltar, Bayside Comprehensive, Gibraltar and St Columba's High School,...
's acclaimed Black Watch to the award. It then went to New York as part of the 2008 Brits-off-Broadway season.
The playwright and poet Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead is a Scottish poet and dramatist, originally from Newarthill in North Lanarkshire.-Background:After attending Glasgow School of Art, Lochhead lectured in fine art for eight years before becoming a professional writer....
has called him 'just about the most original and extraordinary writer of drama we have...a boldly visionary poet...a political Beckett...a flamingly original writer we ignore at our peril.' Time Out said he was 'an uncommonly talented playwright'. A critic 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...
claimed he chose words with the 'precision of a Conrad or a Naipaul', while Mark Brown in the Daily Telegraph claims he has a 'profound and highly original theatrical voice.'
Despite this critical acclaim his plays are largely overlooked by the theatre establishment in the UK.
His latest play Muswell Hill opens at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre
Orange Tree Theatre
The Orange Tree Theatre is a 172-seat theatre at 1 Clarence Street, Richmond in south west London, built specifically as a theatre in the round....
in February 2012 (directed by Sam Walters
Sam Walters
Sam Walters MBE is a British theatre director and Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, specialising in theatre-in-the-round productions...
), while The Company Man, which starred Bruce Alexander
Bruce Alexander
Bruce Alexander is an English actor, perhaps most famous for his portrayal of Superintendent Mullet in the ITV television series A Touch of Frost produced by Yorkshire Television in the United Kingdom, in which he acted as the superior of the main character Detective Inspector William "Jack" Frost,...
and Isla Blair
Isla Blair
Isla Blair is an India-born actress of British descent. She made her first stage appearance in 1963 as Philia in the London debut of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and her first credited film appearance in the 1965 horror film Dr. Terror's House of Horrors.- Biography :Isla Blair...
, played there to some acclaim during October 2010.
His version of Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
's 1926 play Hinkemann (entitled Broken) will be produced in 2012 and directed by James Dacre
James Dacre
-Selected work:*As You Like It by William Shakespeare * World Premiere of The Mountaintop by Katori Hall , 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play, nominated for a further five Olivier, Whatsonstage and Evening Standard Awards*King James Bible *Judgement Day by Mike Poulton, after When We...
.
Downhill, his first full-length feature film, starts shooting in early 2012.
List of works
- A Listening HeavenA Listening HeavenA Listening Heaven is a play for six actors written by the English dramatist Torben Betts.It is a domestic tragedy centring on the suicide of a young eco-warrior and the inability of his rather conservative, emotionally repressed family to cope with his death.The play was initially championed by...
(1996) - Incarcerator (1997)
- The Biggleswades (1997)
- Mummies and Daddies (1998)
- Spurning Comfort (1998)
- Five Visions of the Faithful (2000)
- Clockwatching (2000)
- Silence and Violence (2001)
- The Last Days of Desire (2001)
- The Optimist (2002)
- Her Slightest Touch (2002)
- The Lunatic Queen (2003)
- The Error of Their Ways (2004)
- The Swing of Things (2005)
- The Company Man (2006)
- The UnconqueredThe Unconquered (play)The Unconquered is a play for four actors by Torben Betts which premiered at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews in February 2007 before touring the United Kingdom It received critical acclaim and won the award for Best New Play at the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, 2007...
(2007) - Lie of the Land (2008)
- Constantina (2009)
- Beyond the Ocean Sea (2009)
- Scenes from the Bible (2010)
- Broken (2010), a free adaptation of Hinkemann by Ernst TollerErnst TollerErnst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.- Biography :...
, an Arts Council of England commission - Muswell Hill (2011)
- Downhill (screenplay, 2011)
- An Unquiet Country (screenplay, 2011)
Awards and nominations
- Winner, Best New Play 2006/07 for The Unconquered, Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland
- Nominated, Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2008 for Lie of the Land
- Nominated, Best New Play 2001 for A Listening Heaven, TMA AwardsTMA AwardsThe TMA Awards, established in 1991, are presented annually by the Theatrical Management Association in recognition of creative excellence and outstanding work in United Kingdom theatres...
- Nominated/shortlisted, Verity Bargate Award 2000 for Mummies and Daddies
- Nominated, Best New Play at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2010 for The Company Man
Selected reviews
Centuries apart - two dramas that put a bomb under the nuclear family Review of The Unconquered, Daily Telegraph, 2007Beauty forged in darkness Review of The Unconquered, Glasgow Sunday Herald, 2007
Timely, well-crafted, and unforgettable Joyce MacMillan on The Unconquered, Scotsman, 2008
Questions of freedom, set in black and white Andrea Stevens on The Unconquered, New York Times, 2008
Rural idyll proves another lost Eden Review of Lie of the Land, Evening Standard, 2008
Lie of the Land Review in The Times, April 2009
The new Molière of the middle classes? Alfred Hickling on Clockwatching, Guardian, 2001
That's no lady, that's my wife Review of The Lunatic Queen and The Biggleswades, Observer, 2005
A new Dacre take on morality Michael Coveney in the Observer on Five Visions of the Faithful, 2004
Maggie and the kitchen sink Michael Billington in the Guardian on A Listening Heaven and Incarcerator, 2001
Incarcerator Review of Incarcerator in The Stage, May 2005
Do not look back Review of The Swing of Things, October 2007
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in the British Theatre Guide, October 2010
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in Whatsonstage, November 2010
Publications, collected plays
Plays One (A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies, Clockwatching) - Oberon Books, 2000Plays Two (Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Biggleswades, The Last Days of Desire) - Oberon Books, 2001
Plays Three (The Optimist, The Swing of Things, The Company Man) - Oberon Books, 2008
Publications, single plays
The Lunatic Queen - Oberon Books, 2005The Unconquered - Oberon Books, 2007 and 2008
The Error of their Ways - Oberon Books, 2007
Lie of the Land - Oberon Books, 2008
Muswell Hill - Oberon Books, 2012