Cecil Philip Taylor

Cecil Philip Taylor (1929 - 1981) was a twentieth-century British playwright.

Cecil was born in Glasgow, came to Newcastle upon Tyne, the city where his mother had grown up, in 1955, and lived at 30 Lindale Road, Fenham, for many years.

Taylor left school at 14 and worked in various odd jobs before moving into journalism, and then onto playwrighting. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Marxist (or at least Socialist) viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

His first play was "Aa Went to Blaydon Races" (1962), while "Peter Pan Man" transfers J. M. Barrie’s play to an Elswick estate. The Live Theatre in Newcastle premiered his "Bandits" (1977) which was also performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His most successful work was probably "Good" (1981), in which a liberal German professor Halder whose moral cowardice and subtle corruption leads to his involvement with the Nazi war machine and Auschwitz, in the world of the Third Reich (the title is of course ironic: Halder always see himself as a 'good man' even as he is drawn further and further into Hitler's nightmare).

"Good" was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse in September 1981, when Alan Howard won both the Evening Standard Award and the "Plays and Players" Best Actor awards for his performance as Halder.

The play is frequently revived, most recently in March 1999, also at the Donmar Warehouse, with Charles Dance in the leading role. Good (film) is currently being filmed, with Viggo Mortensen in the role of Halder along with Jason Isaacs. It is due for release in 2008.

The Tyne-Tees production of "And a Nightingale Sang", a bitter-sweet comedy set on wartime Tyneside, won a Prix Europa in 1990. Taylor’s drama has also featured as a central theme of the Edinburgh Festival. He was the founding father of the Northern Playwrights Society (which still flourishes).

Taylor lived in various parts of Northumberland with his second wife, eventually settling in Longhorsely. His untimely death from pneumonia has been attributed to his habit of writing in his garden shed.

References

*Theatre Record and its annual Indexes