Dennis Kelly


Dennis Kelly is a British writer and producer. He has worked for theatre, television, and film.
His play DNA, published in 2007 and first performed in 2008 with his best friend Jules, became a core set-text for GCSE in 2010 and has been studied by approximately 400,000 students each year. He wrote the book for Matilda the Musical, which featured music and lyrics from musician and comedian Tim Minchin. The musical went on to win multiple awards, with Kelly receiving a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. A film adaptation of the musical with screenplay by Kelly was released in December 2022.
For television, he is known for co-creating and co-writing the BBC Three sitcom Pulling, the Channel 4 conspiracy thriller Utopia, and the HBO and Sky Atlantic thriller The Third Day. Kelly also wrote the screenplay for the 2014 film Black Sea.

Personal life

Kelly grew up on a council estate in Barnet, North London. A child of an Irish family, he was one of five children and was raised as a Catholic. He attended Finchley Catholic High School. Leaving school at 16 years of age, Kelly went to work in a market and then at Sainsbury's.
While working in supermarkets, he discovered theatre when he joined a local youth group, the Barnet Drama Centre.
Kelly says that he struggled with alcoholism during much of his 20s. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober since 2001.
At the age of 30, he graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London with First Class Honours in Drama and Theatre Arts.
In September 2011, Kelly married Neapolitan actress Monica Nappo. They had met five years earlier when Nappo was appearing in an Italian premiere of one of Kelly's plays. They separated in 2016 and divorced in 2017. In May 2022, he married Producer Katie Swinden. The couple have one daughter.
At one point Kelly shared his home in Deptford with Vladimir Shcherban from the Belarus Free Theatre company when Shcherban was homeless. Shcherban had fled from Belarus to London, with other members of the theatre company, to escape political censorship and persecution in the aftermath of the 2010 Belarusian presidential election when oppositional candidates had been arrested.

Career

Kelly has credited Sharon Horgan for making him become a writer. They had both initially met in the early 1990s at LOST youth theatre where they performed in a production of Anton Chekov's The Seagull. They again met each other some years later while both drunk in a Camden pub. In the pub Kelly explained to Horgan that he had written a play. The next day Horgan phoned Kelly up and told him that they should both put the play on. Kelly has said that "I honestly think, had I not bumped into her, I wouldn't have become a writer, because I don't think I'd have had the drive. Sharon always had a lot of drive and was quite fearless." The play that Kelly wrote was called Brendan's Visit, which was performed at the Etcetera Theatre and Canal Cafe Theatre, with Horgan playing one of the characters. Kelly has disowned the play saying that "I've killed everyone who ever saw it, let's never talk about that ever again. I don't think I can remember what it was about but I'm definitely not going to say what it was about! It was just a sitcom with swearing which is like a lot people's first plays."
Kelly's first professionally produced play Debris was written when he was 30 years old. He says he wrote it imagining he'd give himself a part. Staged at Theatre503 in 2003, it transferred the next year to Battersea Arts Centre. It was well received and he went on to write the controversially titled Osama the Hero which was produced by Hampstead Theatre, beginning a long-running relationship with the theatre.
He wrote After the End in 2005. It was produced by Paines Plough in his first out of London production at the Traverse, though it later came to the Bush Theatre before going on a tour of the UK and internationally in 2006.
Love and Money was staged at the Royal Exchange, Manchester and then at the Young Vic in 2006. That same year his sitcom Pulling, co-written and starring Sharon Horgan, aired on BBC Three. It received good ratings for the channel and was well reviewed, being nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Situation Comedy in 2007.
Returning to theatre and the Hampstead Theatre in 2007, his fake verbatim play Taking Care of Baby was another success for both writer and theatre.
For the 2007 National Theatre Connections Festival, he wrote DeoxyriboNucleic Acid which after the connections received a professional production alongside The Miracle by Lin Coghlan and Baby Girl by Roy Williams at the National Theatre in the Cottesloe.
The play is now used widely in schools and is on several curriculums for GCSE drama.
The second series of Pulling ran in 2008 and won a British Comedy Award. However, the show was not renewed for a third series, although in 2009 an hour-long special closed the series. That same year he also wrote an episode for Series 8 of Spooks.
In 2009, his play Orphans was staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre before transferring to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

2010s

Kelly was one of the ten writers who took part in writing monologues based on a children's account for a one-off event at the Old Vic Theatre directed by Danny Boyle in London in support of Dramatic Need in 2010. His three monologues were performed by Ben Kingsley, Jenny Jules and Charlie Cox.
In 2010, Kelly returned to the Hampstead Theatre once more for his response to Shakespeare's King Lear, The Gods Weep starring Jeremy Irons, with mixed reviews. His script adapted from Roald Dahl's book for Tim Minchin's production of the musical Matilda proved highly successful, with the musical winning 99 awards between its opening in December 2010 and 2021, and scheduled to continue to run in the West End of London until at least December 2022.
He wrote an adaptation of Pinocchio featuring the songs and score from the Walt Disney film for the National Theatre, opening in December 2017.
Kelly's one-woman play Girls & Boys had its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in February 2018, directed by Lyndsey Turner and starring Carey Mulligan. This production also had a run at the off-Broadway New York theatre, Minetta Lane Theatre in June 2018, to good reviews. In March 2022, State Theatre Company South Australia put on a performance of the play at the Odeon Theatre, Norwood in Adelaide as part of the Adelaide Festival. The performance was directed by the artistic director of STCSA, Mitchell Butel, and starred Justine Clarke. This production received overwhelmingly positive reviews, receiving five stars from reviewers and earning a standing ovation at least one performance. In the Netherlands, the play was staged by Theater Oostpool, directed by Daria Bukvić and starring Hadewych Minis, who won the prestigious Theo d'Or prize for her solo performance.

International success and other work

His work has been produced in Turkey, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Australia, Japan, the United States, France, Belgium, Denmark, Romania and Canada.
Other work includes translations of Péter Kárpáti's Fourth Gate and The Colony, a radio play which won Best European Radio Drama at the Prix Europa, 2004.

Works

Film

  • Matilda the Musical - Writer
  • Black Sea - Writer

    Theatre

Original works
  • Girls & Boys : premiered at the Royal Court Theatre
  • The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas : premiered at the Royal Court Theatre
  • Things That Make No Sense : performed as part of Theatre Uncut: A Response to the Countrywide Spending Cuts, premiered at Southwark Playhouse
  • True Love, Sums and Christmas : monologues performed as part of The Children's Monologues one-off event at the Old Vic Theatre
  • The Gods Weep : premiered at the Hampstead Theatre
  • Orphans : premiered at the Traverse Theatre transferred to the Soho Theatre
  • Our Teacher's a Troll : premiered at Mull Theatre by the National Theatre of Scotland.
  • D.N.A. : part of National Theatre Connections
  • Pupation : written as a 10-minute play and completed by Natasha Bell, Georgia Lester, Indiana Seresin and Joey Sims, premiered at Hampstead Theatre
  • Murder at Gobbler's Wood : written with Enda Walsh and Robin French, premiered at the Latitude Festival at Henham Park
  • Taking Care of Baby : premiered at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre
  • Love and Money : premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre
  • After the End : premiered at the Bush Theatre
  • Osama the Hero : premiered at the Hampstead Theatre
  • Blackout : premiered at the Soho Theatre
  • Debris : premiered at Theatre503
  • Brendan's Visit premiered at the Etcetera Theatre
Adaptations and translations