“Playwriting was my dream. Acting was just a stopgap.”
- Peter Nichols
[Nichols is] “a wayward, curiously self-destructive genius.”
- Director Terry Hands in 1982 (Smith)
Peter Nichols was born on July 11, 1927 in Bristol, England (Hetrick) to Richard Nichols, a commercial traveler, and Violet, a homemaker (Coveney). Nichols also had a brother and his uncle was a theatrical agent who started taking Nichols to the theatre from a very young age (Coveney).
Nichols began his career as an actor in regional theatre, television, and film (Coveney). Having kept a daily journal since he was eighteen (Smith), Nichols’ writing career began in 1959 when he won a BBC Bristol television playwriting competition for A Walk on the Grass. He was then commissioned for other television productions and in 1966 he was credited for the screenplay, Georgy Girl (Coveney).
In 1967, his first major play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, stirred the theatre world. The play is a semi-autobiographical tale about a father raising a brain damaged child (Smith). The play is based on Nichols’ daughter, Abigail, who was born severely brain damaged and began living in a hospital full-time when she was three years old (“Peter Nichols”). She sadly died in 1971 at age eleven (Smith). The play opened on Broadway in 1968 and starred Albert Finney and Zena Walker (Smith), who won the Tony award for Best Featured Actress (Hetrick). It was also nominated for Best Play, Best Director, and Best Actor for Finney (Hetrick). In regards to the play, screenwriter, playwright, and novelist William Goldman said:
“There is no way that ‘Joe Egg’ can be warm and funny, which is why, since it is warm and funny, its achievement is so great…Personally, I didn’t believe that such a play was possible; it expanded my view of the world.” (Smith).
Nichols became known for his “mordantly funny style” where he “addressed themes of death, disability and homosexuality, incorporating elements of vaudeville, British music-hall entertainment, and his own life and upbringing” (Smith). Despite causing “squirming in the audience as well as occasional scorn from English censors”, he was nominated twice for the Tony Award for Best Play (Smith).
In 1982, Nichols decided to retire from playwriting and moved to the countryside to write novels. However, after a few years he moved back to London because he was “fed up looking at sheep” (Smith). Nichols gained the reputation as being the “country’s finest and most cantankerous dramatists”, being called by TheTelegraph in 2007 as “the theater’s preeminent Grumpy Old Man” (Smith). When talking about Nichols, American theatre producer Hal Prince said:
“Maybe he has not been as pragmatic as he might have been. He is one of the best contemporary playwrights your country has produced. I wish he had previously just swallowed some of the guff and saved his generally accurate opinions for himself. There is a certain lunatic courage in how quick he is to express what he feels, and while Peter never sets out to hurt people's feelings, he has never learned not to say what he thinks” (“Peter Nichols”).
Nichols estimated that about forty of his works, including film scripts, novels, and plays, had been rejected. In 2000, Nichols said that if he were to win the lottery, he would buy his own theatre and would hire a company to perform his plays “over and over and over again, not caring if people came or not…It would be wonderful to see the unproduced plays on stage” (Smith).
In 2018, Nichols was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He sadly died at 92 years old on September 7, 2019. He is survived by his wife Thelma and their children Dan, Louise, and Catherine, as well as seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren (Hetrick).
Nichols’ play, Passion, is one of my favorite plays and I highly recommend reading it because the structure of the play is so interesting and it is very beautifully written.
January 8, 2019
Works Cited
Coveney, Michael. “Peter Nichols Obituary.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 Sept. 2019, www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/sep/09/peter-nichols-obituary.
Hetrick, Adam. “Peter Nichols, Playwright of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Dies at 92.”Playbill, PLAYBILL INC., 9 Sept. 2019, www.playbill.com/article/peter-nichols-playwright-of-a-day-in-the-death-of-joe-egg-dies-at-92.
“Peter Nichols: A Voice from the Wilderness.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Apr. 2000, www.theguardian.com/stage/2000/apr/08/theatre.
Smith, Harrison. “Peter Nichols, Mordant Playwright of 'A Day in the Death of Joe Egg,' Dies at 92.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 16 Sept. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/peter-nichols-mordant-playwright-of-a-day-in-the-death-of-joe-egg-dies-at-92/2019/09/10/c5bbfd30-d3d7-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html.
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