Robert Bolt - Partial List of Plays

Partial List of Plays

Bolt wrote several plays for BBC Radio in the '50s, as well as several unproduced plays, so this list is incomplete. Many of his early radio plays were for children, and only a few (see below) were adapted for the stage.

• The Last of the Wine (1956) - A play showcasing the reactions of ordinary Englishmen to the advent of nuclear armageddon - one of Bolt's pet political issues. One of Bolt's radio plays which Bolt tried to adapt to the stage. However, the play was either never performed or performed a few times and then cancelled. Wine has never been published or performed since.
• The Critic and the Heart (1957) - Bolt's first professionally produced work, it involves Winifred Blazer, a middle-aged spinster whose life is ruined by the arrival of a mean-spirited art critic. It was a very modest success, with a two-week run at the Oxford Playhouse. Bolt was never satisfied with this play, and later re-wrote it, retitled Brother and Sister, in a version produced in 1967 with Flora Robson.
• Flowering Cherry (1958) - concerns a middle aged man, an insurance salesman dissatisfied with his life who retreats into his fantasies of owning a cherry orchard. His erratic behavior alienates family and friends and threatens his financial ruin. Ran on the West End starring Ralph Richardson and Celia Johnson (succeeded by Wendy Hiller) to success but mixed reviews - many critics felt it too closely resembled Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman - and had a brief but unsuccessful run on Broadway starring Hiller and Eric Portman.
• The Tiger and the Horse (1960) - this play is the first of Bolt's to develop his themes of individualism, society, authority, and politics. It concerns an aging college professor, John Dean, who is running for Vice-Chancellor of a prestigious university, but finds his election undermined by his daughter's love affair, a political petition, and his wife's deteriorating mental state. The play starred Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, among others, and was directed by Frith Banbury.
• A Man for All Seasons (1960) - as mentioned above, involves Sir Thomas More's conflict with Henry VIII over his break with the Catholic Church. Adapted from a radio play Bolt had written in 1954, it is generally regarded as Bolt's finest work - and certainly his most successful. The play develops in full his themes of individuality versus society and authority as corrupt. The strain of Brechtianism which would pervade many of his later works is first present here, in the character of the 'Common Man', who both narrates and takes part in the action as various minor characters. The original run starred Paul Scofield as Thomas More, as well as Keith Baxter as Henry VIII, George Rose as the Common Man, Leo McKern as the Common Man in the West End production and Thomas Cromwell in the Broadway show (a role originated in London by Andrew Keir and later taken over by Thomas Gomez), and Albert Dekker as the Duke of Norfolk. It was a huge critical and commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic, has had several revivals, and was made into an equally acclaimed film in 1966.
• Gentle Jack (1963) - an unusual work by Bolt, a comedy contrasting humanity's material world with nature. A banker, Jacko, is sent to the countryside on vacation, and becomes influenced by a Nature spirit who convinces him to abandon his office life and live in a state of nature, indulging in base pleasures such as murder, sex, and general mischief. Jacko, however, is torn between his desire to inhabit both the "Natural" and "Logical" Worlds. It was one of Bolt's few unsuccessful plays; Bolt, who considered the play his best work for the stage, regretted this, feeling that perhaps he had not articulated his points well enough. The play starred Kenneth Williams, Michael Bryant, Siân Phillips, Edith Evans, Timothy West and Bernard Kay in its run; the play has not been professionally produced since.
• The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew (1964) - a children's play, involving a heroic knight, Oblong Fitz-Oblong, sent to slay a vicious dragon on a far-away island, leading him to face off with the crooked Baron Bolligrew, who controls the island, and an evil wizard he recruits to help him. The work contains many of Bolt's favorite themes of integrity and honor - as well as Brechtian devices which fit naturally within the story's fantasy setting. The show was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for a showing at Christmastime, 1964. Among the original cast were John Normington as Fitz-Oblong, Michael Jayston as the play's narrator, Bolt perennial Leo McKern as the title character, and Terence Rigby and a young Malcolm McDowell in supporting roles. A revival in the late 1960s featured Roy Kinnear as Fitz-Oblong. Paul Scofield provided a voice recording for the dragon. Like A Man for All Seasons, the play had been written for the BBC, and in 1995 was re-written into a children's book. The play was extremely popular, and throughout the 1960s/70s, it had a yearly revival at Christmas in Britain. In the early 60s, the Augsburger Puppenkiste puppet theatre produced the play for German television in six sequels titled Der kleine dicke Ritter.
• Vivat! Vivat Regina! (1971) - Bolt's most successful show after A Man for All Seasons, a historical account of the reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I of England, comparing and contrasting the personalities and reigns of the two female rulers. Highly successful, it ran for several months on Broadway, earning several Tony nominations. The original cast included Eileen Atkins as Elizabeth and Bolt's wife Sarah Miles as Mary. The play has experiened several revivals, most notably a 1985 Off-Broadway production starring Geraldine Page as Elizabeth.
• State of Revolution (1977) - An in-depth political depiction of the Russian Revolution of 1917, focusing on Vladimir Lenin as "a great man possessed by a terrible idea", and the struggles of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin to gain power under him. It is told from the point-of-view of Lunacharsky, Lenin's Minister of Education. The original cast included Michael Bryant as Lenin, Terence Rigby as Stalin, Brian Blessed as Maxim Gorky, and Michael Kitchen as Trotsky. Though meticulously researched, the play received mixed reviews and had a short run before being shelved. Bolt himself felt that he hadn't gotten the play quite right.

State of Revolution was Bolt's final produced play, though he wrote several others that were never published or produced. He spent much of the mid-to-late 1970s, working on a play about portrait artist Augustus John (famous for a series of portraits of T. E. Lawrence), but his work on The Bounty, and later his failing health, forced him to abandon it.