1988 Brenton, Howard [John] (b. 1942). Greenland. London: Methuen in association with the Royal Court Theatre. 56 pp. Rpt. in his Plays: Two (London: Methuen Drama, 1989), 311-399. First performed at the Royal Court Theatre May 26, 1988. U.S. premiere at the Famous Door Theatre, Chicago, in January 1994. For a related story, see 1988 Brenton, “Questions in Paradise.” A Short Story.” PSt
Two act play. The first act presents contemporary Britain almost as a dystopia. The second act is set seven hundred years in the future in an apparently anarchist eutopia. The author describes it as the culmination of his attempts to create a utopia on the stage; see his “On Writing Utopia Plays” Greenland, [3]. is The first of the three is Sore Throats: An intimate play in two acts. In his Sore Throats & Sonnets of Love and Opposition (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), 5-31. Rpt. in his Plays: One (London: Methuen, 1986), 337-390. It was first performed in 1978 at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Warehouse Theatre in London. The second is Bloody Poetry. London: Methuen, 1985. 82pp. Rpt. in his Plays: Two (London: Methuen Drama, 1989), 233-310. It was first performed in 1984 at the Foco Novo Theatre in Hampstead, England. Neither is a utopia, but Sore Throats reflects Brenton’s argument that to depict people moving toward a utopian state of mind, “you have to show them first at their vilest and their most unhappy,” and Bloody Poetry is about Byron, the Shelleys, Claire Claremont, and Harriet Westbrook as the explore what might be a better way of living. For a detailed analysis of the three plays, see Siân Adiseshiah, “Utopia and the triumph of ordinary life.” In her Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre (London: Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury, 2023), 129-158.
