Wood, Charles Gerald

Wood, Charles Gerald (1932– ), English playwright, noted for his inventive dialogue and for the military background of many of his plays—he served for five years in the regular army. His first work for the theatre was Cockade (1963), a triple bill, Prisoner and Escort, John Thomas, and Spare, featuring different aspects of army life. The farcical fantasy Meals on Wheels (1965) and Fill the Stage with Happy Hours (1966), which has a background of old-time weekly repertory, were followed by two war plays: Dingo (Royal Court, 1967), set partly in a North African prisoner-of-war camp; and H, or Monologues at Front of Burning Cities (National Theatre, 1969), a savage indictment of Havelock's march to the relief of Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. Another triple bill Welfare (1970) deals with the relationship between youth and age pre- and post-Second World War. Veterans (Royal Court, 1972), which starred John Gielgud and John Mills as veteran actors, is set on a film location in Turkey, and arose out of Wood's experiences as script writer for the film The Charge of the Light Brigade. Jingo (RSC, 1975) is an attack on the complacency of the British in Singapore in 1941. He returned to a film-making background with Has ‘Washington’ Legs? (NT, 1978); Red Star (RSC, 1984), about film-making in the Soviet Union; and Across from the Garden of Allah (1986), a comedy about an English screenwriter and his wife in Hollywood. His adaptation of Pirandello's Man, Beast and Virtue was staged at the National Theatre in 1989.