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Mercer, David
Mercer, David (1928–80), English playwright, whose plays reflect an interest in both politics—he was a disillusioned Marxist—and schizophrenia and madness. He was already well known for his television plays when in 1965 the RSC staged his one-act political play The Governor's Lady. In the same year Peter O'Toole appeared in Ride a Cock Horse as the working-class anti-hero alienated from his background by his success as a writer; it was produced in New York in 1979. Two further plays, Belcher's Luck (1966) and After Haggerty (1970), the latter about a dramatic critic with a sense of professional importence, were produced by the RSC. Michael Hordern played the title-role of Flint (also 1970), a lecherous and agnostic clergyman who elopes with a pregnant Irish girl. The eponymous hero of Cousin Vladimir (1978), a fugitive from Soviet Russia confronted by the moral degeneracy of modern England, perhaps mirrored Mercer's own perplexities; and No Limits to Love (1980) concerns the sexual and other relationships between four intellectuals, a woman and three men. Both were presented by the RSC.
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Cite this article
PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-MercerDavid.html PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-MercerDavid.html |
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Mercer, David
Mercer, David (1928–80), playwright, born in Wakefield, the son of an engine-driver. He achieved recognition with his trilogy of television plays, Where the Difference Begins (1961), A Climate of Fear (1962), and The Birth of a Private Man (1963); it opens in a Yorkshire working-class home and ends with death on the Berlin Wall. Mental disturbance, alienation, class conflict (particularly between working-class father and educated son), left-wing politics, and Marxism are recurrent themes in many of his works for stage, screen, and television. Subsequent plays include A Suitable Case for Treatment (TV 1962, filmed as Morgan, 1965), After Haggerty (1970), and Shooting the Chandelier (TV 1977). Mercer was one of the first playwrights to appreciate the possibilities of television as a writer's medium.
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Cite this article
MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 30 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (May 30, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-MercerDavid.html MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Mercer, David." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved May 30, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-MercerDavid.html |
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