JOHN BYRNE   (1940 - )


John Byrne
   Nationality:
British
   Literary Agent: *:
   Email:
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   Website:
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Plays by John Byrne

JOHN BYRNE
Babes In The Wood
1st Produced:
Glasgow
1980
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Musical
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
by John Byrne; music by John Gould, lyrics by David Dearlove
Synopsis:
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JOHN BYRNE
Candy Kisses
1st Produced:
1984
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
wonderful confusion is set in train by the accidental progress of an ancient handgun around the inhabitants of a pensione in Perugia in 1963.
- Susan Todd, New Statesman
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JOHN BYRNE
Cara Coco
1st Produced:
Irvine, Ayrshire
1981
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
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JOHN BYRNE
Colquhoun and McBryde
1st Produced:
1992
Company:
-
1st Published:
Faber & Faber, London, 1992
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
True Drama
-
Parts:
Male
6
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Based on the lives of Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde the painters. Colquhoun bumps into MacBryde at the Glasgow School of Art and they become instant friends and lovers. After graduating they move to London and set up in a bed sit they become friends with many of the "Bohemian" set such as Dylan Thomas. But drink was their problem and they spend a lot of time drinking or drunk. They get their first big exhibition and are feted the artistic circles and the press. It is the Second World War, Colquhoun enlists as an ambulance driver despite the fact he cannot drive. MacBryde is exempt war service on medical grounds. War service proves to be too much for Colquhoun and he is discharged on medical grounds. They spend some time living with a friend in Essex. Returning to their bed-sit they are evicted for non payment of rent. They descend even further into alcoholism. The owner of the gallery that put on their exhibitions dies and the new owner no longer wants to display their work. They have a hand to mouth existence sponging money from friends and living in a succession of grotty bed-sits.
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JOHN BYRNE
Cuckolds London, The
1st Produced:
1985
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London, 1986
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Adaptation
Parts:
Male
9
Female
5
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Original Playwright - Edward Ravenscroft
Synopsis:
three beautiful wives, three ludicrous husbands and one overly ambitious, rapacious rake
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JOHN BYRNE
Cuttin' a Rug
1st Produced:
1982
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
see Loveliest Night Of The Year
Synopsis:
-
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JOHN BYRNE
Government Inspector, The
1st Produced:
1997
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Adaptation
Parts:
Male
12
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Original Playwright - Nikolai Gogol
Synopsis:
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JOHN BYRNE
Hooray For Hollywood
1st Produced:
1979-80
Company:
-
1st Published:
Contact Actors Theatre of Louisville,
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
Short Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
5
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
part of The American Project: a compendium of short plays
Synopsis:
A writer's first collision with tinsel-town machinery
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JOHN BYRNE
London Cuckolds
1st Produced:
Leicester
1985
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London, 1986
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Adaptation
Parts:
Male
9
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Original Playwright - Edward Ravenscroft
Synopsis:
Period 1600 two aldermen with young wives argue about the qualities in a woman that make for a secure marriage before finding themselves cuckolded
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JOHN BYRNE
Loveliest Night Of The Year, The
1st Produced:
1979
Company:
-
1st Published:
Threads in "A Decade's Drama: Six Scottish Plays, Woodhouse, Todmorden, Lancashire. Cuttin' A Rug, Edinburgh, Salamander Press, 1982, 1980
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
6
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
part of "The Slab Boys Trilogy" aka Cuttin' a Rug (London, 1982), Threads (London, 1980), broadcast as The Staffie
Synopsis:
famous study of the lives of a group of Paisley boys working in the 'slab room' of a local carpet factory. Looks more closely at the theme of class tension on one hand and masculinity defined by violence on the other; but he also opens up a sense of beauty and romance, of pure sexual magic, as a redemptive force in the lives he describes. - McMillan, Scotsman.
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JOHN BYRNE
Normal Service
1st Produced:
1979
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays and Players", May, London, 1979
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
The everyday non-events of Caledonian Television circa 1963
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JOHN BYRNE
Nova Scotia
1st Produced:
2008
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
part four of "The Slab Boys Story"
Synopsis:
30 years on from when we last met him and Lucille in The Garden of Remembrance, Phil McCann faces the New Millennium with fortitude and good humour. The leading arts correspondent of the day is on her way to the far north to record a radio profile which Phil's confident will relaunch his career as a painter and establish him once and for all as a colossus of contemporary Caledonian culture. . .The only fly in the ointment is his new and much younger partner, Didi, a video-artist of some renown, who has just been added to the shortlist of nominees for the Turner Prize. Unfortunately, there are other flies buzzing about this particular ointment. . .
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JOHN BYRNE
Slab Boys
1st Produced:
1978
Company:
-
1st Published:
in 'on the argot', Scottish Society of Playwrights, Glasgow, 1982
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
6
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
part one of "The Slab Boys Trilogy". Originally called Paisley Patterns.
Synopsis:
from the fifties to the seventies, through Brylcream and Elvis to fluorescent underpants and hash cookies, catches the vibrant idiom of a whole generation. Powerful high farce out of the tension between Phil and Spanky's youthful wit and exuberance, and the dark undercurrent of sheer cruelty in their treatment of the Slab Romm wimp, Hector, and other victims.
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JOHN BYRNE
Still Life
1st Produced:
1982
Company:
-
1st Published:
Salamander Press, Edinburgh, 1982
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
4
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
part three of "The Slab Boys Trilogy"
Synopsis:
famous study of the lives of a group of Paisley boys working in the 'slab room' of a local carpet factory. The hero, Phil Cann, confronts the premature deaths of the trilogy's two great victims, poor Hector and his own mad mother, and evokes a fairly bleak image of youthful hopes aborted, or diverted into an absurd circus of hip 1970's culture, before proposing Phil's redemption through fatherhood and his true marriage to Lucille, always every Slab Boy's dream. - McMillan, Scotsman.
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JOHN BYRNE
Tutti Frutti
1st Produced:
His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen
2006
Company:
National Theatre of Scotland
1st Published:
Faber, London, 2006
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
Musical Play
Musical
Parts:
Male
8
Female
5
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
Twenty-three years on from their slightly dodgy, single foray into the charts, Scottish pop sensations The Majestics are mourning the loss of Big Jazza - their charismatic frontman - whose Ford Sierra just collided with a bus shelter via an unwelcome late-night kebab. With a Silver Jubilee tour booked, an album to cut and a TV documentary in the offing, can Jazza's brother, Danny, just washed up from New York with only four dollars to his name, save the day? It was 1987 when John Byrne's award-winning comedy-drama burst onto the nation's TV screens, searing itself into a generation's consciousness in the process. Now he has adapted his own original script, as the National Theatre of Scotland and His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, bring Vinnie, Eddie Clockerty, Miss Toner, Suzi Kettles, Bomba et al to the stage for the very first time.
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JOHN BYRNE
Uncle Varick
1st Produced:
2004
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
5
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
Original Playwright - Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya)
Synopsis:
How funny is Chekhov? In John Byrne's witty transposition of Uncle Vanya to north-east Scotland in 1964, the laughs come thick and fast. But, although Brian Cox lends his massive presence to the ineffectual, hops-producing Varick, the sheer ingenuity of Byrne's adaptation somewhat diminishes the pain of the original play. Byrne, as we know from Writer's Cramp, has a sharp eye for cultural pseudery. And he has most fun here with the character of Sandy Sheridan - the equivalent of Chekhov's Professor - a metropolitan art pundit who pens patronising pieces claiming "the landscape of Landseer is wasted on the Scots" and who, according to the envious Varick, has all the visual sophistication of Blind Pew. Byrne keeps up an endless supply of 1960s satirical jokes, with Varick's muddled mother poring over a slim volume entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Penis in 20th-Century Art." - Billington, Guardian
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JOHN BYRNE
Writer's Cramp
1st Produced:
Calton Studios, Edinburgh
1977
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "Plays and Players", December, London, 1977
ISBN
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
3
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes:
-
Synopsis:
takes satirical swipes at Anglo-Scottish cultural pretensions.
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