Fry, Christopher

Fry, Christopher [ Christopher Harris] (1907– ), English dramatist, who took his stage name from his grandmother's maiden name. Originally a schoolmaster, he gained his early experience of the theatre in Oxford, and had already written a couple of pageants, a religious play about St Cuthbert entitled The Boy with a Cart (1937), and, for Tewkesbury, The Tower (1939), when he first attracted attention with A Phoenix Too Frequent (1946), a one-act jeu d'esprit. In 1948 The Firstborn (on the early life of Moses) was seen at the Edinburgh Festival, Thor, with Angels at Canterbury, and The Lady's not for Burning at the Arts Theatre in London, with Alec Clunes as Thomas Mendip. This last (the ‘spring’ play in a planned tetralogy of the seasons), transferred to the Globe with Gielgud as Thomas, consolidated Fry's reputation, and seemed to herald a renaissance of poetic drama on the London stage. It was followed in 1950 by Venus Observed, the ‘autumn’ play, which starred Laurence Olivier, and a translation of Anouilh's L'Invitation au château as Ring round the Moon, in which Paul Scofield played the dual role of the hero and the villain. Fry then reverted to his earlier biblical vein with A Sleep of Prisoners (1951), planned for performance in a church and first seen at St Thomas's, Regent Street. In spite of the superb acting of Edith Evans as the Countess Rosmarin, the ‘winter’ play, The Dark is Light Enough (1954), did not have the hoped-for success, and for some time Fry busied himself with translations, among them Anouilh's L'Alouette (on Joan of Arc) as The Lark (1955); Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu as Tiger at the Gates (London and NY, 1955), with Michael Redgrave as Hector; and Giraudoux's Pour Lucrèce as Duel of Angels (1958; NY, 1960).

It was by now obvious that the trend of the English theatre was away from poetry, and Fry's next play Curtmantle (on Henry II and Becket) was first produced in The Netherlands in 1961. It was seen in London a year later, but had only a qualified success, as did the ‘summer’ play A Yard of Sun (1970). Two further translations, of Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, were performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1970 and 1975 respectively: both employed Fry's characteristic form of free but regularly stressed verse with richly imaginative word-play.