David Campton (June 5, 1924–September 9, 2006) was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years. "He was one of the first British dramatists to write in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd".[1]
In performance reviews of productions of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace and The Birthday Party, by Harold Pinter, published in the short-lived British drama magazine Encore, drama critic Irving Wardle borrowed the term "comedy of menace" from the subtitle of Campton's play, popularizing the term "comedies of menace".[2]
Campton addressed the matter of critics' "pigeonholing" his work:
"I dislike pigeonholes and object to being popped into one. However, one label that might fit is the title of an anthology of my plays: Laughter and Fear. This is not quite the same as comedy of menace, which has acquired a connotation of theatre of the absurd. It is in fact present in my lightest domestic comedy. It seems to me that the chaos affecting everyone today––political, technical, sociological, religious, etc., etc.,––is so all-pervading that it cannot be ignored, yet so shattering that it can only be approached through comedy. Tragedy demands firm foundations; today we are dancing among the ruins." (Qtd. in "David Campton, Playwright")
Biography
Campton was born in Leicester, in 1924. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School. From 1942 to 1945, he served in the RAF, and then, for another year, in the Fleet Air Arm. He worked as a clerk in the City of Leicester Department of Education until 1949 and then moved to the East Midlands Gas Board, where he worked until 1956.
Awards
Works
- Full-length plays
- One-act plays
- Dramatic sketch
- Anthologies
Notes
- ^ "David Campton, Playwright", Samuel French London.
- ^ Susan Hollis Merritt, Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and the Plays of Harold Pinter (1990; Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995) 5, 9, 225–26, and 310.
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