i.m. Trevor Griffiths 4th April 1935 – 29th March 2024
And so Griffiths slips into grey and takes the red with him;
Britains most political playwright, unheard for some time,
Sings through death, as his ever powerful lines dare each dark
Which even by day came to douse him, as it does us, unseeing,
While he detailed it all through scribed breath.
Trevor Griffiths made every actor Marxist, because of the beliefs
Bestowed on them. The Common Aim’s bright Adventure
Was to in Britain at best, build reform. Just read or watch
His Bill Brand, as Jack Shepherd herds forestalled promise,
Or, excite at the debates in The Party, in which John Tagg’s
Oration allows monologue to transform into an Aria
Of intent. Trevor Griffiths staged revolutions. From The Wages
Of Thin to Camel Station, his Oi for England was street stung
Opera. He made the pen mightier than the sword
For the purposes of perception, and inked up the anguish
Spilt by Thatcher’s Belgrano blood. Mopping her,
And her like, the domestic and ever damaging despots
With unwasted words gave this writer the means to expose
Social shame. Now dead at the same age as Bond,
Or Wally Absurdity Simpson, Griffiths outlived
Narrow fashion to become if not a Theatrical brand,
Then a name by which standards are set, despite winning
No recent productions, joining Bond, Barker, Mercer
And even Ken Campbell it seems, in the mist,
That falser prophets induce, when they can only summon
Smoke, free from fire. Trevor Griffiths was Playwright
As Sniper, with Informant and Fascist and Tory of course,
On his list. He wrote one of modern theatre’s best plays,
Along with Miller’s Death of a Salesman, for Comedians
Is a treatise on where we were then and could go.
And where we still are, as we have not progressed
Any further. Fifty years later, Gethin Price is a future
For which the vacuum of death sucks and blows.
Price is violence and pride as well as progression.
He is Ritual and Vaudeville, Gothic Horror
And the slick and secret heart set to flame.
He is the sun-bright burning light around which
The tamed traditionalists stagger. He is the danger dealt
Within dreamscapes and the erection at Auschwitz
That scores the scope of disbelief and our blame.
Comedians is a Play about men and the civilization
They’ve ruined. An act of attack also for audience,
Reader, creatives and crew, activist; one of many
Manifestoes TG made in which all sexes crescendo,
As an intellectual climax passionately engineered
Sees change kissed. As well as refused as culture
Carves up the crucial, and the dance of past decades
Becomes a contest of votes from fools mailing in.
Would he have written that way, starting now?
I like to think the same sensibilty would have surfaced,
But like all things from Deep water, he may well have
Appeared alien. For writers are not made now like him,
Or like his contemporaries either. With the need to discern
Long disrupted, we, as weak witness are in no uncertain
Terms failing him. As we spit at the system that’s split
And deride politicians, but show no desire to stop them,
Or seduce Medusa’s stare from shut eyes. Griffiths
Wrote Fatherland for Berlin and the feature film Reds
For Warren Beatty. He re-communised Sons and Lovers,
Gave Thom Paine time and hope size. He described
And walked war-torn streets in the so called peace
And in Paris. He made from Manchester the marvel
Of revolutionary zeal and torn lies. He empathized
With womanly fear Through the Night, and told
The tragedy of a bygone Tory Country. While Bond
Made marred futures, Griffiths showed ours,
Compromised. He wrote as a true Worker would,
With all of his craft burning in him.
Art made from anvils, and a Play as the practice
Of those who would fight and fail.
And their prize.
David Erdos 2/4/24
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