DEAR, Nick 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born June 11, 1955, in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England; married Penny Downie; two children. Education: University of Essex, B.A. (with honors), 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Rosica Colin Ltd., 1 Clareville Grove Mews, London SW7 5AH, England.

CAREER:

Playwright. Worked variously as messenger, laundry van driver, bakery worker, garage attendant, town sergeant at Southampton Guildhall, film company administrator, and tutor in film and photography; University of Essex, playwright-in-residence, 1985; Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, England, Arts Council playwright-in-residence, 1987-88.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pye Radio Award, 1980; John Whiting Award, 1987; British Academy of Film and Television Artists Award for best single drama, 1996, for Persuasion; Broadcasting Press Guild Award, 1996; South Bank Theatre Award, 2000, for Summerfolk; Prix Italia, 2004, for Eroica.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

The Perfect Alibi, produced in Colchester, Essex, England, 1980.

Temptation, produced in London, England, 1984, produced in New York, NY, 1985.

The Bed, produced in Colchester, Essex, England, 1985.

Pure Science (revised version of radio play; produced in Stratford-on-Avon, England, 1986), Nelson (Walton-on-Thames, England), 1993.

The Art of Success (produced in Stratford-on-Avon, England, 1986; produced in London, England, 1987; produced in New York, NY, 1989), published with In the Ruins, Methuen (London, England), 1989, collected in Plays One, 2000.

Food of Love, produced in London, England, 1988.

(Adaptor) Alexander Ostrovsky, A Family Affair (also see below; produced in London, England, 1988), Absolute (Bath, England), 1989.

In the Ruins (revised version of radio play; produced in Bristol, England, 1989; produced in London, England, 1990), published with The Art of Success, Methuen (London, England), 1989, collected in Plays One, 2000.

(Adaptor) Tirso de Molina, The Last Days of Don Juan (produced in Stratford-on-Avon, England, 1990), Absolute (Bath, England), 1990.

(Adaptor) Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (produced in London, England, 1992), Absolute (Bath, England), 1992.

(Author of libretto) A Family Affair (opera; adaptation of the play by Alexander Ostrovsky), music by Julian Grant, produced in London, England, 1993.

(Author of libretto) Siren Song (opera), music by Jonathan Dove, produced in London, England, 1994.

Zenobia (produced in London, England, 1995), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1995, collected in Plays One, 2000.

(Adaptor) Maxim Gorky, Summerfolk (produced in London, England, 1999), Faber and Faber (London, England), 1999.

The Villains' Opera (adaptation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera; produced in London, England, 2000), Faber and Faber (London, England), 2000.

Plays One (includes The Art of Success, In the Ruins, Zenobia, and The Turn of the Screw), Faber and Faber (London, England), 2000.

(With others) The Chain Play, produced in London, England, 2001.

(Adaptor) Alexei Arbuzuv, The Promise, Faber and Faber (London, England), 2002.

Power, produced in London, England, 2003.

SCREENPLAYS

(With Ann Foreman) Memo, 1980.

(With Ann Foreman) The Monkey Parade, 1982.

Persuasion (adaptation of the novel by Jane Austen; produced 1995), Methuen Film (London, England), 1996.

(With others) The Gambler (adaptation of a work by Fyodor Dostoevsky), Independent Artists, 1997.

The Turn of the Screw (adaptation of a work by Henry James), ITV (London, England), 1999.

(Adaptor) Cinderella, Channel 4 TV (London, England), 2000.

Byron, CBBC TV (London, England), 2003.

Eroica, BBC TV (London, England), 2003.

RADIO PLAYS

Matter Permitted, 1980.

Pure Science, 1983.

In the Ruins, 1984.

Jonathan Wild (adaptation of the novel by Henry Fielding), 1985.

Free, 1986.

(With David Sawer) Swansong, 1989.

SIDELIGHTS:

British playwright Nick Dear's prolific output includes many plays for stage, screen, and radio. His stage play The Art of Success is perhaps Dear's most well-received work. Artist William Hogarth is the central character, and most of the other characters are also based on historical figures. They include Hogarth's wife Jane, novelist Henry Fielding, British Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Queen Caroline, madam Mrs. Needham, and murderess Sarah Sprackling, whom Hogarth drew in her prison cell. Other characters include Hogarth's favorite prostitute, Louisa, an aristocrat, and a financier. Frank Scheck wrote in Back Stage that the play "is a feverish exercise in debate about art, culture, sex, and morality, with healthy doses of absurdism thrown in. When Hogarth has a nightmare about the world that his art will reflect, it is something like pornographic MTV."

The Art of Success takes place during a single night in the 1730s. "Dear, like Shakespeare, always favors dramatic impact over strict chronology," noted Thomas M. Disch in the Nation, "so that years of a particular life may be compressed into one evening." Disch, who was reporting on a Manhattan production of the play, wrote that it is "as likely a candidate for entry into the long-term repertory of English theater as any play written in the past decade. It is ingeniously stylized, willfully anachronistic, extremely persuasive, and flaunts its high ambition like a banner above the stage proclaiming the author's genius."

A Family Affair is Dear's adaptation of a work by Russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. The original play, written in 1850, and which Tsar Nicholas I found to be vulgar, was banned from the Russian stage for ten years. The leading character is Merchant Bashov, who typifies the businessmen who became rich by avoiding paying their creditors during Nicholas's corrupt reign. Bashov plans to escape a bankruptcy suit by transferring his assets to his young assistant, who he then plans to pair with his daughter in order to retain control of his wealth. Bashov is aided in his task by a snake-like lawyer, and the young assistant, Lazar, leaves his innocence behind. Victor Gluck commented in Back Stage that in Dear's adaptation, "the play remains a scathing indictment of the bourgeoisie, which it condemns as greedy, scheming, grasping, dishonest, and selfish."

John Gay's 1728 work The Beggar's Opera, which was first revived by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill as The Threepenny Opera in 1928, is the basis for The Villains' Opera. Dear's villains include corrupt policemen, street criminals, womanizers, a pub owner and small-time criminal and police informant, and a gangland boss who lives as a respectable gentleman in the village of Kent. Lizzie Loveridge wrote in a review for CurtainUp.com that "Dear's script is full of colorful language and references to local places in the seamier side of London. He has created a realistic picture that's often not funny but full of irony. These are menacing men who treat their women, wives, and daughters badly. Pretty tunes sit next to ugly lyrics."

Dear's Power is an original drama about conflict in which the young Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King of France, ascends to the throne. Also figuring in the drama is Fouquet, the court financier whose deceptions will come back to haunt him. Matt Wolf wrote in Variety that "Fouquet's nemesis is to be found less in the young king himself than in fellow courtier Colbert, who dryly awaits his own 'new age' while bringing Fouquet to account: the upstanding (if also uptight) minister poised for battle with the freewheeling, self-regarding connoisseur of greed."

Among Dear's screenplays are Persuasion, an adaptation of the 1818 novel by Jane Austen, and The Gambler, named for the passion of the central character, Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann reviewed Persuasion, noting that Austen's novel is difficult to adapt to the stage because its action is tied up in a romance that has ended before the story begins and that resumes as it ends. The heroine, Anne Elliott, originally turned away the man she loves on the advice of a friend who deemed him unsuitably poor. Her own family falls on hard times, and when Anne and Frederick again meet, he is recently returned from the Napoleonic war and rich. He is bitter toward her and gives his attention to a pair of silly sisters before fate brings the lovers together.

Newsweek reviewer David Ansen provided insight into the complexities confronted by Dear while adapting the novel, observing: "written in the final year of her life, Persuasion is considered the most autobiographical of Austen's novels. It's a comedy tinged with melancholy and the ache of missed opportunities. From an author who satirized the follies of romanticism, and tweaked with moonstruck romantic excess, it's the closest she came to revealing her own yearning soul."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Back Stage, January 12, 1990, Frank Scheck, review of The Art of Success, p. A52; December 15, 1995, Gregg Wilson, review of A Family Affair, p. 40; March 9, 2001, Victor Gluck, review of A Family Affair, p. 56.

Nation, February 19, 1990, Thomas M. Disch, review of The Art of Success, p. 250.

National Review, October 23, 1995, John Simon, review of Persuasion, p. 59.

New Republic, October 9, 1995, Stanley Kauffmann, review of Persuasion, p. 26; August 23, 1999, Stanley Kauffmann, review of The Gambler, p. 28.

New Statesman, July 21, 2003, Sheridan Morley, review of Power, p. 46.

Newsweek, October 9, 1995, David Ansen, review of Persuasion, p. 78.

People, October 30, 1995, Leah Rozen, review of Persuasion, p. 20.

Spectator, May 9, 1992, Christopher Edwards, review of Le bourgeois gentilhomme, p. 38; July 24, 1993, Robin Holloway, review of A Family Affair, pp. 36-37; July 19, 2003, Toby Young, review of Power, p. 41.

Variety, April 17, 2000, Matt Wolf, review of The Villains' Opera, p. 35; August 11, 2003, Matt Wolf, review of Power, p. 29.

ONLINE

CurtainUp.com,http://www.curtainup.com/ (October 6, 2004), Lizzie Loveridge, reviews of Summerfolk and The Villains' Opera.