Whiting, John

Whiting, John (1917–63), English dramatist, who first came into prominence when his play A Penny for a Song (1951) was produced at the Haymarket Theatre. A light-hearted comedy set in the time of the Napoleonic wars, it was well received by the critics but failed with the public. Also in 1951 Whiting won a playwriting competition to mark the Festival of Britain with Saint's Day, produced at the Arts Theatre; it was condemned by the critics for obscurity but publicly defended by theatre people such as Gielgud, Guthrie, and Peggy Ashcroft who considered it intensely poetic and theatrically exciting. Whiting's other plays were Marching Song (1954), a darkly symbolic drama of conscience; The Gates of Summer, seen on tour in 1956 and in London in 1970; and The Devils (1961), based on a historical work. The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley, which was staged with great success by the RSC. In 1962 the RSC presented a rewritten and much improved version of A Penny for a Song, which in 1967 was used as the libretto of an opera by Richard Rodney Bennett. Whiting also translated Anouilh's Madame de … and Le Voyageur sans bagage (as The Traveller without Luggage), both seen in 1959, and in 1965 the Bristol Old Vic put on Conditions of Agreement, found among his papers after his death, which was also produced in New York in 1972. Whiting is generally agreed to have been in advance of his time: he died just as his reputation in England was beginning to equal that he achieved on the Continent, especially in Germany.