Ryan Craig (playwright)

Ryan Craig (born 9 January 1972) is a British playwright, whose plays usually probe both social norms and ethical issues. He is also a writer for screen, television and radio.

Craig is best known for his plays What We Did To Weinstein (Menier Chocolate Factory, London, 2005), which earned him a Most Promising Playwright Nomination at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards; The Glass Room (Hampstead Theatre, 2006), which deals with Holocaust denial; and The Holy Rosenbergs (National Theatre, 2011); as well as for writing the English version of Tadeusz Słobodzianek's Our Class (National Theatre, 2009). His most recent play is the semi-autobiographical Filthy Business (Hampstead Theatre, 2017).

Early life

Craig was born near Hampstead Heath, London, to parents of Jewish, Dutch and Northern Irish heritage. His father worked in the family rubber retail business, depicted in Craig's 2017 play Filthy Business.

When Craig was two he moved with his family to the up-and-coming suburb of Mill Hill in North West London and attended first Radlett Prep and then Haberdashers' Aske's in Elstree. For his twelfth birthday a school friend bought him the text of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker, of which he writes: “It blew my mind. The language, the anger, the humour. So close to the rhythms of my East End Jewish family.”[1] Craig describes his family as “loud, talkative, argumentative, and possibly too close for its own good.”[2]

Craig studied for a BA in History and Philosophy at the University of Leeds, graduating in 1994. In 1996, he completed an MA program in Contemporary Theatre Practice run by Jonathan Lichtenstein at the University of Essex. There he studied with Mike Alfreds and Annie Castledine among others.

Career in theatre

Early works

Craig's first play, The Sins of Dalia Baumgarten, was written for a directing project at Essex (1995). It is set predominantly in the ladies’ toilet at a Jewish wedding, and all of the characters have a secular London Jewish background, as do many of the characters in his subsequent plays. The Sins of Dalia Baumgarten was produced in June 1996 in London at the Etcetera Theatre, Camden. Described by Edward Simpkins in What's On as a portrait of a "drunken but cathartic social swirl",[3] it caught the attention of Jack Bradley, at the time the literary manager of the National Theatre, and Bradley encouraged Craig to keep writing.

Craig next wrote Happy Savages, which John Peter in the Sunday Times characterized as a "tough, bruising play about vulnerable, bruised people".[4] It was produced at the Lyric Studio, Hammersmith in 1998, with a cast including Kris Marshall and Hermione Gulliford, and after this Bradley offered Craig an eight-week writing attachment at the National Theatre Studio.[2]

There followed an adaptation of Tom Sharpe's novel Vintage Stuff, in a touring production, and Three Servants, presented in 2002 at the Warehouse in Croydon. For Time Out reviewer Lucy Powell, the latter was a "neat, tightly choreographed play" inspired by "Japanese comic theatre, commedia dell'arte and The Arabian Nights".[5]

Professional breakthrough

Craig's next play, What We Did To Weinstein, deals with a Jewish son returning from a traumatic event in the West Bank to tend to his famous writer father. Directed by Tim Supple, it premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2005 and earned Craig a Most Promising Playwright Nomination at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Nicholas de Jongh's review for the Evening Standard commented that the play "fascinates because it reflects the complex passions of Jews in more than two minds about what Jewishness entails".[6] Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph praised its "theatrical vitality" and "vividly drawn characters", commenting that its "vaultingly ambitious" approach suggested parallels with recent work by Mike Leigh and David Edgar.[7]

Also in 2005, Craig's play Broken Road won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play was set entirely in a moving car, prompting the Scotsman's reviewer Jay Richardson to call it "genuinely edge-of-the-seatbelt stuff".[8] The production, directed by Carrie Cracknell, briefly transferred later that year to Battersea Arts Centre.

Craig's next stage play was The Glass Room (directed by Anthony Clark at Hampstead Theatre, 2006), which deals with Holocaust denial. Its two main characters are a historian, Elena, who denies that the Nazi gas chambers existed, and Myles, a human rights lawyer who defends her freedom of speech when she faces prosecution under new laws. Claire Allfree in Metro identified "verbal sparring" as the play's essential feature and argued that "Craig raises some excellent points about historical imperialism and the problem of maintaining individual freedom within a culture that believes in religious tolerance".[9] Susannah Clapp of the Observer, who considered the play "adroitly phrased and arresting but too neatly patterned", commented that "Ryan Craig has carved out a distinctive dramatic niche for himself by writing debates about 21st-century Jewishness".[10]

Work at the National Theatre

In 2009, Craig wrote an English version of Tadeusz Słobodzianek's Holocaust play Our Class, which was staged at the National Theatre. The cast of Bijan Sheibani's production included Amanda Hale, Paul Hickey, Edward Hogg, Sinead Matthews, Justin Salinger and Jason Watkins. Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph noted that "Bijan Sheibani's production of Ryan Craig's English version has a sober, documentary feel" and argued that it is the characters' "stark words ... that make the evening so chilling".[11] Susannah Clapp in the Observer praised Craig's having "subtly translated" Słobodzianek,[12] and John Nathan in the Jewish Chronicle referred to Craig "elegantly" rendering Słobodzianek's original.[13]

Craig's next play was The Holy Rosenbergs, which premiered at the National Theatre in 2011, directed by Laurie Sansom and starring Henry Goodman. It centres on the North London Rosenberg family, kosher caterers, on the eve of their son's funeral. Danny, a pilot in the Israeli air-force, had been killed in action over Gaza; his sister, Ruth, is a lawyer investigating alleged human rights abuses by the Israeli Defence Forces. The play examines family conflict, guilt and the impact of Israeli politics within the London Jewish community. Critics compared the play to Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Death of a Salesman,[14] and Craig indeed shares Miller's obsession with achieving ethical clarity in a nebulous world. Writing for The Arts Desk, Aleks Sierz applauded a play that "buzzes with discussion and debate", concluding that "In the clarity of its construction, the tension of its climax and the slow unveiling of its emotional core, this is a very fine play indeed".[15] In The Times, Libby Purves wrote that "The play educates and provokes" and "is startlingly fair" – "clear, gripping, moving, at times extremely funny, and important".[16]

From January 2012 to March 2013 Craig was Writer in Residence at the National Theatre Studio.

Recent work

In 2017, Craig's play Filthy Business premiered at Hampstead Theatre, directed by Edward Hall and starring Sara Kestelman. Reviewing it in the Evening Standard, Henry Hitchings described it as "meaty", a "portrait of a volatile family ... spanning the years 1968 to 1982" that "pictures social change through the prism of commerce" and takes particular interest in "toxic tribalism".[17] In the Daily Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish praised it as "valiant and valuable, daring to show Jewish folk on the make, warts and all".[18] The play premiered in New Zealand, in a production by Auckland Theatre Company, in 2018.[19]

Craig's comedy Games for Lovers premiered at Waterloo's Vaults in the summer of 2019, directed by Anthony Banks, with a cast including Evanna Lynch and Billy Postlethwaite. In the Guardian, Miriam Gillinson summed it up as a portrait of "four young people [who] scour the internet and hang out in bars, searching madly for love in all the wrong places" and commented that "A giddy carefreeness underpins this light-hearted new comedy about love in the internet age – it feels as if everyone is cutting loose for the summer."[20]

Thematic focus of Craig's plays

Craig was a founder member of a group of playwrights known as the "Monsterists", whose philosophy was expounded by David Eldridge in an article for the Guardian in 2005. The other members, besides Eldridge, included Richard Bean, Moira Buffini, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Colin Teevan and Roy Williams. Among the principles of Monsterism were a commitment to large-scale drama unafraid of ambitious concepts and "the elevation of new theatre writing from the ghetto of the studio 'black box' to the main stage".[21]

In an article entitled “Wesker’s Dream” (2014),[22] Craig discussed his preoccupations as a writer and confirmed that his “theme is often the struggle between family, community and individual identity” and that while he often concentrates “on the rituals and codes of a North London Jewish family”, his target audience is not necessarily immigrant communities. “I believe such plays can redefine what it is to be British,” he writes, and he reflects on the difficulties inherent in writing about Jewish subjects for an audience in Britain today.

Interviewed in 2017 by Jessie Thompson for the Evening Standard, Craig remarked, "Just a cursory look at my output thus far will show a preoccupation with the theme of Jewish identity. I feel like the senile, old father in Wallander, obsessively painting the exact same section of forest, but with a different mood."[23]

Other writing

Craig's television work includes the Channel 4 drama Saddam's Tribe, in which Stanley Townsend played Saddam Hussein, as well as episodes of The Musketeers, Robin Hood, Hustle, and Waterloo Road (BBC).

Craig was writer in residence at BBC Radio Drama in 2005. His radio plays include A Question of Judgement, English in Afghanistan, The Lysistrata Project, Hold My Breath, Portugal, The Great Pursuit and Looking for Danny.

Critic Aleks Sierz has commented that Craig “learnt much of his craft by writing for television and radio.”[24]

Oberon Books have published nine of his plays.

Plays[25]

Television[25]

Radio[25]
  • English in Afghanistan (BBC Radio 4) - 2010
  • The Lysistrata Project (BBC Radio 3) - 2006
  • The Great Pursuit (Four-part adaptation of the novel by Tom Sharpe) (BBC Radio 4) - 2005
  • Hold My Breath (BBC Radio 3) - 2005
  • Portugal (BBC Radio 3) - 2004
  • Looking for Danny (BBC Radio 4) - 2003

References
  1. A personal email from Ryan Craig, 8.3.18. See also Jessie Thompson, “Play Talk: Ryan Craig on writing about Jewish identity and exposing yourself in your writing,” Evening Standard Arts, 21 March 2017.
  2. A personal email from Ryan Craig, 8.3.18.
  3. What's On, 12 June 1996.
  4. Sunday Times, 9 August 1998.
  5. Time Out, 13 November 2002.
  6. Evening Standard, 27 September 2005.
  7. Daily Telegraph, 29 September 2005.
  8. Scotsman, 26 August 2005.
  9. Metro, 30 November 2006.
  10. Observer, 3 December 2016.
  11. Daily Telegraph, 25 September 2009.
  12. Observer, 27 September 2009.
  13. Jewish Chronicle, 2 October 2009.
  14. See Michael Billington, “The Holy Rosenbergs – review,” The Guardian, 16 March 2011; Charles Spencer, “The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre, review,” The Telegraph, 17 March 2011; David Benedict, “Review: ‘The Holy Rosenbergs,’ Variety, 17 March 2011; Paul Taylor, “The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre: Cottesloe, London,” Independent, 18 March 2011; John Nathan, “Craig discovers his rubber soul,” The Jewish Chronicle, 17 March 2017.
  15. https://theartsdesk.com/theatre/holy-rosenbergs-national-theatre
  16. The Times, 17 March 2011.
  17. Evening Standard, 17 March 2017.
  18. Daily Telegraph, 17 March 2017.
  19. https://www.atc.co.nz/auckland-theatre-company/2017-18/filthy-business/
  20. Guardian, 19 July 2019.
  21. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/jun/27/theatre
  22. A review of Daniel Kanaber’s play Shiver at the Watford Palace, published in the Jewish Quarterly 61/1, 2014: 52-53.
  23. Jessie Thompson, “Play Talk: Ryan Craig on writing about Jewish identity and exposing yourself in your writing,” Evening Standard Arts, 21 March 2017.
  24. Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, online site http://www.inyerfacetheatre.com/az.html#c
  25. Ryan Craig Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  26. https://www.thevaults.london/games-for-lovers
  27. "FILTHY BUSINESS". Hampstead Theatre. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  28. Billington, Michael (17 March 2017). "Filthy Business review – a superbly modern Mother Courage". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.
  29. "We Lost Elijah". We Lost Elijah. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  30. "How to think the unthinkable - Unicorn Theatre". www.unicorntheatre.com. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  31. "The Holy Rosenbergs, National Theatre: Cottesloe, London". The Independent. 18 March 2011. Retrieved 21 December 2018.
  32. Billington, Michael (29 November 2006). "The Glass Room". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.
  33. Gardner, Lyn (27 September 2005). "What We Did to Weinstein". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077.
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