David Campton


David Campton was a prolific British dramatist who wrote plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years.

Biography

Campton was born in Leicester, in 1924. He was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys. 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. Campton worked with Stephen Joseph in developing theatre in the round in the United Kingdom, and played a major role in establishing theatre-in-the-rounds in both Scarborough, North Yorkshire and Staffordshire in the English West Midlands. He worked as writer, actor and also regularly ran the box-office and front-of-house. Campton always credited himself with giving a young Alan Ayckbourn one of his first jobs at Scarborough with the immortal words, 'watch me my boy and one day you might become a playwright like me!' Ayckbourn later became Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre and an internationally renowned playwright. Campton was always keen to encourage those interested in drama, even amateurs. At the age of seventy-six, he directed and appeared in one of the plays he had previously written for Stephen Joseph at Scarborough, Passport to Florence, with a group of amateurs, ACTWS, in Leicester. This may have been his final performance on stage.

Evaluation

In performance reviews published in the short-lived British drama magazine Encore of productions of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace and Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, drama critic Irving Wardle borrowed the term "comedy of menace" from the subtitle of Campton's play, popularizing the term "comedies of menace".
Campton addressed the matter of critics' "pigeonholing" his work:

Awards

  • First prize in a competition sponsored by the Tavistock Repertory Company
  • British Arts Council bursary
  • British Theatre Association prizes

    Works

;Full-length plays
  • Dead and Alive
  • The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, which includes:
  • *A Smell of Burning
  • *Then...
  • *Memento Mori
  • *Getting and Spending
  • The Life and Death of Almost Everybody
  • Carmilla
;One-act plays
  • After Midnight––Before Dawn
  • Alison
  • Angel Unwilling
  • Apocalypse Now And Then
  • Asking
  • At Sea
  • Attitutudes
  • Bacchanalia
  • Break-up
  • Build Up
  • But Not Here
  • The Cagebirds
  • The Cactus Garden
  • Can You Hear the Music?
  • Cards, Cups and Crystal Ball
  • Change Partners
  • Cock & Bull Story
  • Come Back Tomorrow
  • Comeback
  • Cooked
  • Cuckoo Song
  • Dark Wings
  • Do-It-Yourself-Frankenstein Outfit
  • Doctor Alexander
  • Don't Wait For Me
  • Dragons Are Dangerous
  • Evergreens
  • Everybody's Friend
  • Little Brother, Little Sister
  • Memento Mori
  • Mrs Meadowsweet
  • Now and Then
  • Our Branch in Brussels
  • Out of the Flying Pan
  • Parcel
  • Permission to Cry
  • Relics
  • Right Place
  • Singing in the Wilderness
  • A Smell of Burning
  • Smile
  • Then
  • Us and Them
  • What Are You Doing Here?
  • Who Calls?
  • Winter of 1917
  • Some of My Best Friends Are Smiths
;Dramatic sketch
  • Resting Place
;Anthologies
  • Laughter and Fear. )
  • Two in the Corner
  • ''On Stage Again''