Livings: Plays One

Livings was a one-off with a startlingly individual voice, an anarchic sense of humour and a fierce and loving commitment to his working-class anti-heroes. He was arguably the most audacious of his generation of playwrights, strongly influenced by his two years at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, where he acted in Brendan Behan's The Quare Fellow. Most of his plays are surreal farces set in ordinary places: a public lavatory in Stop It, Whoever You Are; a bolier room in Eh?; outside the door of a lift on the upper floor of a high-rise block of flats in The Ffinest Ffamily in the Land. Reviews were divided fairly evenly between disgust and delight, one of his critics referring to a piece he had just seen as "this thing...I cannot call it a play", another begging his readers on bended knees to go see this play immediately. His best-known play is Eh?, directed by Peter Hall with the RSC at the Aldwych Theatre with David Warner in the lead. The play was later performed at The Circle in the Square in New York, featuring the then unknown Dustin Hoffman as Valentine Brose. Includes the plays; Eh?, Honour and Offer, Stop It, Whoever You Are, The Ffinest Ffamily In the Land and Don't Touch Him He Might Resent I