Mature Works
Following his initial success, Barnes wrote a series of plays offering apocalyptic visions of various periods in history:
- Leonardo's Last Supper (1969) portrayed Leonardo da Vinci being prematurely declared dead, with his subsequent "resurrection" in a filthy charnel-house.
- The Bewitched (1974), which he produced with the RSC, showed the Spanish state attempting to produce an heir for Carlos II, whom Barnes portrayed as being impotent and imbecile.
- Laughter! (1978) was his most controversial work, a double-bill that jumped from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to a satire based on the tedious bureaucracy required to sustain Auschwitz.
- Red Noses (1985) depicts a sprightly priest, originally played by Antony Sher, who travelled around the plague-affected villages of 14th century France with a band of fools, known as God's Zanies, offering holy assistance. It was for this play that Barnes won his Olivier award.
Read more about this topic: Peter Barnes (playwright)
Famous quotes containing the words mature and/or works:
“Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.””
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)