Complete Plays: The Lunatic View (1957)

The Lunatic View
The Lunatic View was the name given to an evening of four short plays by David Campton. For full details of the individual plays, visit the pages for Memento Mori, A Smell of Burning, Getting & Spending and Then….
Production Details
Title:
Author:
New Play:

Venue:
Location:
Staging:
The Lunatic View
David Campton
No

The Library Theatre, Scarborough
Large lecture room
Round
First performance:
Opening night:
Final performance:
30 December 1957
30 December 1957
4 January 1958
Company Details
Director:

Stage Manager:
Assistant Stage Manager:
Rodney Wood

John Smith
Marlene Murray
Actors
Clive Goodwin
Celia Hewitt
Stephen Joseph
Actors
Prunella Saenger
Brian Wallace
Why is this play significant?
The Lunatic View was the first of David Campton's anthology of plays offering dark and satirical one act pieces which were considered to be part of the 'Comedy of Menace' genre which was influential at the time, leading to comparisons with the likes of Harold Pinter.
Notes
○ The Lunatic View was one of the plays presented during Studio Theatre Ltd's inaugural winter season at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough. As the Concert Room was not available, it was performed in the large lecture room on the first floor of the library in an elongated 'round' layout.
○ The Lunatic View was the first play presented by the Studio Theatre Ltd company to have been written specifically for in-the-round performance.
○ The Lunatic View consisted of four one act plays by David Campton: Memento Mori, A Smell of Burning, Getting & Spending and Then….
○ Although The Lunatic View is not credited as a world premiere at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, this was still the world premiere production having opened in London prior to the winter season at Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre, Scarborough. The Lunatic View originally ran from 25 November - 7 December 1957 at the Mahatma Gandhi Assembly Hall, 41 Fitzroy Square, London, before the same production transferred to Scarborough.
○ David Campton was Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre's first writer-in-residence and met Stephen Joseph as a participant in one of his playwriting courses held at the Central School Of Speech And Drama, London, prior to Theatre in the Round at the Library Theatre opening in 1955.
○ The programme credits Heath Block as playing the Radio Announcer; Heath Block was one of several pseudonyms used by the company's Artistic Director Stephen Joseph.
○ The Lunatic View marked the point at which David Campton's work began to draw critical attention and favourable comparisons with what was dubbed 'theatre of menace.'
○ Notably, Then… featured its two protagonists wearing brown paper bags for the entirety of the play's duration. Alan Ayckbourn, who performed in a revival of the play, noted the difficulty of being heard when wearing a paper bag which muffled the voice and also how the bags tended to start to disintegrate as they got wet from the mouth, leading to the discomfort of tasting paper during and post-show!
○ Stephen Joseph launched the inaugural winter season in 1957, which would run until 1961 and would then not be reinstated until 1974.
All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd.