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On Class, Christianity, and Questions of Comedy

Peter Barnes was born in 1931, and has been writing for the theatre since 1963: but he remains resolutely uncommercial, and enjoys even among enthusiasts an essentially cult following – though this includes Terry Hands, who directed his most recent work to reach the stage. Red Noses, for the RSC at the Barbican in 1985. The Ruling Class, his ‘baroque comedy’ on the British aristocracy and the ways it exercises power, helped to bring him the John Whiting Award in 1968 and the Evening Standard award as most promising playwright of 1969, though many found his ‘neo-Jacobean’ portrait of a sublimely insignificant Spanish monarch. The Bewitched, an even richer work when it reached the Aldwych under Hands's direction in 1974. Laughter, half-set in Auschwitz, followed at the Royal Court in 1978. In between, Barnes proselytizes enthusiastically for Ben Jonson, on whom he wrote for NTQ11 (1987), but makes most of his living from writing screenplays, and as a radio dramatist – notably in his occasional but long-running sequence of monologues. Barnes's People. As a near-contemporary, NTQ co-editor Clive Barker began this interview by discussing Barnes's own background, and talks also with the dramatist about his distinctive themes, beliefs, and working methods. Peter Barnes's Collected Plays to date have recently been published by Methuen.