| John Byrne | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 January 1940 Paisley, Scotland |
| Occupation | Playwright/Artist |
John Byrne (born 6 January 1940) is a Scottish playwright and artist.
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John Byrne was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire where he grew up in the Ferguslie Park housing scheme and educated at the town's St Mirin's Academy before attending Glasgow School of Art from 1958 to 1963. Byrne has received several Honorary Doctorates: in 1997 he was presented with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Paisley, in 2004 he was made an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy, in 2006 he was presented with an Honorary Doctorate from the Robert Gordon University Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen and in 2011 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Dundee.
He currently lives in Edinburgh with his children, twins Xavier and Honor, close to their mother, Academy Award winning actress Tilda Swinton.
| Year | Title | Additional information |
|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Writer's Cramp | A short radio play about the life and hard times of 'Francis Seneca McDade', a Scottish writer-painter and Paisley's answer to McGonagall, became an Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit which transferred to the Bush Theatre in 1977 and was revived at Hampstead Theatre, starring Bill Paterson in August 1980.[1] |
| 1979 | The Loveliest Night of the Year | |
| 1979 | Normal Service | The play was commissioned by Hampstead Theatre and received its first production in March 1979. |
| 1979-80 | Hooray for Hollywood | |
| 1980 | Babes in the Wood | |
| 1981 | Cara Coco | |
| 1978–1982 | The Slab Boys (1978) | Together they make up The Slab Boys Trilogy |
| Cuttin' a Rug (1979), revised as Threads (March 1980) | ||
| Still Life (1982) | ||
| 1984 | Candy Kisses | Premiered at the Bush Theatre on 2 May 1984, Carmen du Sautoy played Bobby, a sweet Brooklyn bitch, with John Sessions as Larry, her draft-dodging LA lover, frantically beefing up their Italian in a Florentine pensione in November 1963, against a backdrop of several failed assassination attempts on Pope Paul VI (with historic ineffectuality).[2] |
| 1985 | London Cuckolds | |
| 1992 | Colquhoun and MacBryde | Two gay Scottish painters, graduates of the Glasgow School of Art, Robert Colquhoun (1914–62) and Robert MacBryde (1915–66) in 1941 took on the London establishment in Soho, Cork Street and the pages of Picture Post; Byrne's biographical burlesque was staged by Lindsay Posner at the Royal Court in September 1992 to mixed reviews.[3] |
| 1997 | The Government Inspector | |
| 2004 | Uncle Varick | A comedic adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya |
| 2004 | Tutti Frutti | An adaptation of the TV Series |
| 2008 | Nova Scotia | The fourth play in the Slab Boys story |
| 2010 | The Cherry Orchard | Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in a new Scottish version by John Byrne, premiered at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh from 16 April to 8 May. A social comedy in which a grand Scottish family finds its home and estate threatened by property developers and the modern world.[4] |
Byrne is best known as the writer of Tutti Frutti, a 1987 television series starring Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, and Richard Wilson, which he later turned into a play.[5] He also wrote the six-part series Your Cheatin' Heart in 1990.
From 1964 until 1966 he designed jackets for Penguin Books. Following unsuccessful experiences with London galleries he released (through London’s Portal Gallery) a series of works from 1967 under the pseudonym of "Patrick" he claimed were created by his father, an alleged self-taught painter of faux-naïf images.[6] These works began to meet with some success and his painting career commenced.
As well as designing the settings for his own plays Byrne, in collaboration with director Robin Lefrevre, also designed the settings for Snoo Wilson's The Number of the Beast (Bush 1982) and Clifford Odets' The Country Girl (Apollo Theatre 1983).[7]
Byrne has also designed record covers for Donovan, The Beatles, Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly. Singer-songwriter Rafferty's song Patrick is written about Byrne (the lyrics begin: "Patrick my primitive painter of art/You will always and ever be near to my heart"), and the pair co-wrote several songs together.
He illustrated Selected Stories by James Kelman, winner of the 1994 Booker Prize. His work is held in major collections in Scotland and abroad. Several of his paintings hang in The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, including portraits of Robbie Coltrane, Billy Connolly, Tilda Swinton (the mother of his children), and a self-portrait.