| Torben Betts | |
|---|---|
| Born | 10 February 1968 Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK |
| Occupation | Dramatist |
Torben Betts is an award-winning English playwright and screenwriter.
A consistently controversial dramatist, who has written heavily naturalistic plays as well as epic, poetic works, he has been hailed as a successor to writers as diverse as Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Bond and Howard Barker. Michael Billington in a review for the Guardian described his 1999 play A Listening Heaven 'like the best work of Edward Albee' and that it has 'an Eugene O'Neill-like emotional force.' His plays are essentially tragic in nature, though they are all notable for their often excruciatingly uncomfortable comedy. Seeing something of himself in the young Betts, Ayckbourn invited him to be his resident dramatist at Scarborough's Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1999.
Betts' play The Unconquered, in a touring production by the Stellar Quines Theatre Company, was Best New Play in the 2006-7 Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland, beating Gregory Burke's acclaimed Black Watch to the award. It then went to New York as part of the 2008 Brits-off-Broadway season.
The playwright and poet Liz Lochhead has called him 'just about the most original and extraordinary writer of drama we have...a boldly visionary poet...a political Beckett...a flamingly original writer we ignore at our peril.' Time Out said he was 'an uncommonly talented playwright'. A critic in The Times claimed he chose words with the 'precision of a Conrad or a Naipaul', while Mark Brown in the Daily Telegraph claims he has a 'profound and highly original theatrical voice.'
Despite this critical acclaim his plays are largely overlooked by the theatre establishment in the UK.
His latest play Muswell Hill opens at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre in February 2012 (directed by Sam Walters and starring Jasmine Hyde, Dan Starkey and Leon Ockenden), while The Company Man, which starred Bruce Alexander and Isla Blair, played there to some acclaim during October 2010.
Downhill, his first full-length feature film, starts shooting in early 2012.
Contents |
Centuries apart - two dramas that put a bomb under the nuclear family Review of The Unconquered, Daily Telegraph, 2007
Beauty forged in darkness Review of The Unconquered, Glasgow Sunday Herald, 2007
Timely, well-crafted, and unforgettable Joyce MacMillan on The Unconquered, Scotsman, 2008
Questions of freedom, set in black and white Andrea Stevens on The Unconquered, New York Times, 2008
Rural idyll proves another lost Eden Review of Lie of the Land, Evening Standard, 2008
Lie of the Land Review in The Times, April 2009
The new Molière of the middle classes? Alfred Hickling on Clockwatching, Guardian, 2001
That's no lady, that's my wife Review of The Lunatic Queen and The Biggleswades, Observer, 2005
A new Dacre take on morality Michael Coveney in the Observer on Five Visions of the Faithful, 2004
Maggie and the kitchen sink Michael Billington in the Guardian on A Listening Heaven and Incarcerator, 2001
Incarcerator Review of Incarcerator in The Stage, May 2005
Do not look back Review of The Swing of Things, October 2007
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in the British Theatre Guide, October 2010
The Company Man Review of The Company Man in Whatsonstage, November 2010
Plays One (A Listening Heaven, Mummies and Daddies, Clockwatching) - Oberon Books, 2000
Plays Two (Incarcerator, Five Visions of the Faithful, Silence and Violence, The Biggleswades, The Last Days of Desire) - Oberon Books, 2001
Plays Three (The Optimist, The Swing of Things, The Company Man) - Oberon Books, 2008
The Lunatic Queen - Oberon Books, 2005
The Unconquered - Oberon Books, 2007 and 2008
The Error of their Ways - Oberon Books, 2007
Lie of the Land - Oberon Books, 2008
Muswell Hill - Oberon Books, 2012