A quick word on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Paine’s death. Trevor Griffiths’s magnificent play in celebration of Paine’s life, A New World, is playing in repertory at the Globe theatre in London until 9 October. Griffiths, who wrote Comedians, the screenplay for Reds and Bill Brand, a great TV series on parliamentary politics, and much else besides, has turned his screenplay for a film about Paine into a boisterous and moving play that somehow packs in Paine’s involvement in the American War of Independence, his dispute with Edmund Burke over the French Revolution and his opposition to the Revolution’s descent into violence.
Griffiths is an eloquent writer all on his own. He brings these tumultuous events to life on stage through imagined debates with Washington, Adams, Danton and others. But the play is also remarkable for his skilful use of Paine’s own words and arguments. Their contemporary ring amid the sloth of political and democratic understanding now brings home how utterly shocking and inspiring they must have been in his own time.
There are other contemporary aspects to watching the play in the Globe’s open-air arena. Paine was held without charge on the verge of execution for ten months during the Terror; and while this period of his life was being played out on stage and within the pit, the Met’s surveillance helicopters clattered noisily over head. Griffiths has meanwhile suffered from being uncompromisingly left wing. In the late 1990s, the BBC even dithered over giving Food for Ravens, his TV play about Aneurin Bevan, a proper showing until they were shamed into it. Don't miss A New World if you can help it.
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