Норман Симпсон: Писатель абсурда и его пьесы.

English playwright

Norman Frederick Simpson (29 January 1919 – 27 August 2011) was an English playwright closely associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. To his friends he was known as Wally Simpson, in comic reference to the abdication crisis of 1936.

Born in London, Simpson studied at Emanuel School before taking a job as a bank clerk. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery and Intelligence Corps, travelling to Italy, Palestine and Cyprus. Following studies at Birkbeck College for a degree in English Literature from the University of London after the war, Simpson taught English in adult education for almost 20 years.

The turning point in Simpson’s life came in 1957 when he won third prize in The Observer newspaper’s quest for new writers, headed by theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. A Resounding Tinkle premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 1 December 1957 with Nigel Davenport as Bro Paradock and Wendy Craig as Middie Paradock. Under pressure from Tony Richardson, Simpson, to his regret, truncated the play to a 50 minute one act piece. In 1959 the first complete production of the two act version was performed by the Cambridge Theatre Actors, under the direction of John Bird with Peter Cook and Eleanor Bron in the leading roles. The Cambridge production toured briefly to the Royal Court, on 15 March 1960; but the theatre only belatedly staged its own production of the two act original on 17 January 2006.

A Resounding Tinkle typifies Simpson’s aversion to plot and establishes his talent for memorable one liners and non sequiturs. As with all of his subsequent work, the play demands absolutely straight delivery from actors. Such an approach fosters a conviction within the audience that the characters are living in a form of reality, where the formation of a government can be arranged via door to door enquiries. The extraordinary and impossible are treated as perfectly rational everyday events. This comic balance is recognised as a major influence on the early work of Peter Cook, particularly the E. L. Wisty monologues. Many comparisons have been drawn to the work of key absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco. However, Simpson denied any link, adding that he had never even heard of the writer when he commenced a career in nonsense. In his own view, the valid literary parallels are with Lewis Carroll, James Thurber and P. G. Wodehouse. Simpson’s early work must also be viewed in its cultural context. BBC Radio's The Goon Show was widely admired, bringing surrealism to the masses for the first time. Plays such as A Resounding Tinkle arguably gentrified the idiom for London’s theatregoers, and with them the highbrow elite.

A close relationship between Simpson and the Royal Court continued after Tinkle, encompassing the plays The Hole (1958), his key work One Way Pendulum (1959) and The Cresta Run (1965). Having supported new work by Barrie Keeffe, Sam Shepard and Snoo Wilson, he left in April 1978, returning to theatre for an Eduardo De Filippo translation, Inner Voices, at the National Theatre in 1983. Tinkle was eventually broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in July 1960, in its one act form with Deryck Guyler and Alison Leggatt as the Paradocks. That year saw Simpson’s first radio commission, a sketch for the BBC Home Service's weekly revue Monday Night at Home. Cold feet amongst the production team caused it to be dropped before transmission. Subsequently, Simpson’s radio work rarely strayed from the confines of the Third Programme, most notably the 1982 monologues Snippets, read by Richard Vernon.

The Theatre of the Absurd arrived on television in 1961, with productions of Simpson plays on both British networks. BBC TV produced a live performance of One Way Pendulum, now lost, whilst Granada mounted a shortened version of A Resounding Tinkle for ITV. He was invited to contribute to BBC TV’s That Was The Week That Was, although his sketch, 'Televising Parliament', was dropped due to overruns in the live transmission on 16 November 1963, and has never surfaced. Hot on the heels of his Summer Holiday success, director Peter Yates agreed to shoot Simpson’s best known stage play, One Way Pendulum (1964). Starring Eric Sykes, George Cole and a mute Jonathan Miller, Yates' rendition of the play captured Simpson’s matter of fact approach to nonsense but failed at the box office. As the BBC’s Acting Assistant Head of Light Entertainment, Frank Muir invited Simpson to write for BBC2 in 1965. The central characters of Tinkle were expanded into seven half hours of Three Rousing Tinkles (1966) and Four Tall Tinkles (1967), featuring Edwin Apps and Pauline Devaney as Bro and Middie. He followed this with World in Ferment (1969), a six part parody of current affairs programming with John Bird, Eleanor Bron, Jack Shepherd and Angela Thorne, of which no episodes survive. His final series for television was the unsuccessful Charley’s Grants (1970), co written with John Fortune and John Wells, starring Hattie Jacques, and produced by Ian MacNaughton (who produced Monty Python’s Flying Circus), which is also entirely lost. Plays followed, including a satire on advertising, Thank You Very Much (1971), and an effective three hander for ITV, Silver Wedding (1974), directed by Mike Newell. Simpson’s highest profile production for television was Elementary, My Dear Watson (1973), a Sherlock Holmes parody for BBC One's Comedy Playhouse starring John Cleese and Willie Rushton. It has been screened several times at the National Film Theatre in London. It is frequently argued that Simpson’s work operates better in small doses (Simpson himself described his only novel called Man Overboard as one which he expected no one to be able to read to the end), so it is natural that he should have produced so much sketch material for television. World in Ferment lent towards this strength, and his skilful monologues for women were seen again in But Seriously – It’s Sheila Hancock (1972). Other vehicles included Ned Sherrin's The Rather Reassuring Programme (1977), Beryl Reid Says Good Evening (1968) and The Dick Emery Show (1977–1980).

Simpson lived in Cornwall in later life and travelled around England's canals on a narrowboat.