Christopher Fry

Christopher Fry, born Arthur Hammond Harris on 18 December 1907 in Bristol, was an English poet and playwright. He died on 30 June 2005. His reputation rests chiefly on his verse dramas, particularly The Lady's Not for Burning (1948), which established him as a significant figure in theatre during the 1940s and 1950s.

Early life

Fry was the son of Charles John Harris, a master builder who left his trade to work full-time as a licensed Lay Reader in the Church of England, and Emma Marguerite Fry Hammond Harris. As a child, he adopted his mother’s maiden name, believing—on shaky grounds—that she was related to the 19th-century Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

He also embraced her faith and became a Quaker. He attended Bedford Modern School, where he wrote amateur plays, and later worked as a teacher at the Bedford Froebel Kindergarten and Hazelwood School in Limpsfield, Surrey. In the 1920s, he met the writer Robert Gittings, who became a lifelong friend.

Career

In 1932, Fry left teaching to found the Tunbridge Wells Repertory Players, which he ran for three years, directing and acting in the English premiere of George Bernard Shaw’s A Village Wooing in 1934. For that production, he used a revised version of a schoolboy play called The Peregrines as a curtain-raiser. He also composed the music for She Shall Have Music in 1935. A play he wrote about Thomas John Barnardo, founder of the Barnardo’s children’s homes, toured in an amateur fund-raising production in 1935 and 1936, featuring Deborah Kerr in the cast.

His professional career gained momentum in 1938, when the vicar of Steyning, West Sussex, commissioned a play about the local saint, Cuthman. That work, The Boy With A Cart, was staged professionally in 1950 at the Lyric, Hammersmith, with John Gielgud directing and a young Richard Burton in his first starring role.

Tewkesbury Abbey commissioned his next play, The Tower (1939), which was seen by T. S. Eliot, who became a friend and is often cited as an influence. That same year, Fry became artistic director of the Oxford Playhouse. A pacifist, he registered as a conscientious objector during World War II and served in the Non-Combatant Corps, spending part of his time cleaning London’s sewers.

After the war, he wrote A Phoenix Too Frequent, a comedy based on Petronius’s tale of the Ephesian widow. Produced at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, and revived at the Arts Theatre London in 1946, it starred Paul Scofield, Hermione Hannen, and Joan White.

The Firstborn, set in Egypt amid conflict between master and slave, with Moses renouncing his Egyptian privileges, was produced at the Oxford Playhouse in 1948. That production, staged by actress Katharine Cornell, included two songs specially written by Leonard Bernstein. In 1948, Fry also wrote Thor, With Angels for the Canterbury Festival.

Major works

A commission from Alec Clunes, manager of the Arts Theatre in London, led to The Lady’s Not for Burning, first performed in 1948 under the direction of Jack Hawkins. Its success prompted a nine-month West End run starring John Gielgud, with Richard Burton and Claire Bloom in the cast, and it was presented on Broadway in 1950, again with Burton. The play revived interest in poetic drama, a form championed by T. S. Eliot, and it remains Fry’s most performed work. It also inspired British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to adapt its title for a famous political line in 1980.

In 1950, Fry adapted Jean Anouilh’s Invitation to the Castle as Ring Round the Moon for director Peter Brook. He also wrote Venus Observed, produced at the St James’s Theatre by Laurence Olivier.

A Sleep of Prisoners followed in 1951, first performed at St Thomas’ church in Regent Street, London, and later touring with Denholm Elliott and Stanley Baker. The Dark is Light Enough, a winter play starring Katharine Cornell and Edith Evans in 1954, was the third in a planned quartet of seasonal plays, with incidental music by Leonard Bernstein; the cast included Tyrone Power, Lorne Greene, and Marian Winters, and Christopher Plummer had an understudy role. The quartet was completed in 1970 with A Yard Of Sun, representing summer, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Fry also translated several French plays: The Lark from Anouilh’s L’Alouette (1955); Tiger At The Gates from Jean Giraudoux’s La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (also 1955); Duel of Angels from Giraudoux’s Pour Lucrèce (1960); and Judith, also by Giraudoux (1962). His poetic style of drama fell out of fashion with the rise of the Angry Young Men in the mid-1950s. He worked mainly in cinema during the 1960s, writing scripts for Ben Hur, Barabbas, and The Bible: In the Beginning..., but continued writing plays, including Curtmantle for the Royal Shakespeare Company (1961), about Henry II and his conflict with Thomas Becket, and A Yard of Sun (1970), set just after World War II during the Palio di Siena horse race.