Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980), theatre critic, considered by many the greatest theatre critic writing in English since George Bernard Shaw. Tynan's talent lay in a rare combination: a dazzling yet precise prose style, allied to a passionate intellectual analysis of theatre's importance to society.

Born in Birmingham, Tynan was educated at Oxford University where he quickly achieved a reputation, less as an actor than as a mesmerizing public speaker and an outrageous dandy. After graduating he directed the Lichfield Repertory Company for a season in 1949. By late 1952 he had published a collection of theatre essays and become the Evening Standard's drama critic. He derided the English public's “devotion to anything 20 years out of date and performed by a popular married couple”, and looked to Europe and America for vital theatre. From 1954 to 1958 he wrote for the Observer, championing the socially engaged theatre of Bertolt Brecht (above all), Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. When Look Back in Anger by John Osborne was first performed in 1956, Tynan recognized it as a theatrical breakthrough, and wrote powerfully in support of the controversial play.

After spells on the New Yorker (1958-1961) and the Observer again (1960-1963), Tynan teamed up with Laurence Olivier to mastermind the new National Theatre's astonishingly successful first decade (1963-1972). Simultaneously he fought for the removal of theatrical censorship, and campaigned for greater freedom in sexual attitudes. These causes were vividly symbolized by his introduction of a controversial expletive for the first time on British television, and by his “erotic revue”Oh! Calcutta! (New York, 1969; London, 1970). Lung disease forced Tynan to move to Los Angeles in 1975, where he wrote occasional profiles and features for the New Yorker in his last years. After Tynan's death, the playwright Tom Stoppard acknowledged that “our time was of his making”.

Tynan's books include a collection of essays on theatre, He that Plays the King (1950); collections of his criticism, Curtains (1961) and Tynan Right and Left (1967); and a collection of journalism, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping (1975).