Tom McGrath; Scottish dramatist, poet and journalist
Hyfler/Rosner
May 27, 2009
Tom McGrath: Scottish dramatist, poet and journalist
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6367238.ece
The poet and dramatist Tom McGrath was a leading figure in
the Scottish theatrical scene and the founding editor of one
of the great "underground" magazines, International Times.
He was born in 1940 in Rutherglen, an old Lanarkshire town
now swallowed by Glasgow. He was influenced by the US Beat
generation, and befriended one of its leading lights, the
Scottish-born Alexander Trocchi, after reading his gloomy
novel of barge life Young Adam (1956).
He also got to know the Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing,
who called him an "innocent", a tag he adopted with pride
and used as the title for his autobiographical play. Neil
Cooper, the theatre critic, described McGrath as having a
"Zelig-like presence" in the countercultural 1960s scene. In
his encounters with Americans, McGrath was occasionally
confused with the US poet Thomas McGrath: William Burroughs
seems to have regarded the similarity of name as a
deliberate ploy by McGrath to annoy people.
In 1965 McGrath was based in London, and in that year was
one of the readers at the first big British "happening" of
the 1960s, the International Poetry Incarnation held at the
Albert Hall (other performers included Adrian Mitchell
reading Tell Me Lies About Vietnam, Michael Horovitz, Allen
Ginsberg and Germaine Greer). The event was filmed by Peter
Whitehead as Wholly Communion.
In 1966 McGrath was headhunted from Peace News, where he was
features editor, to become the first editor of International
Times. The magazine was launched at a big Roundhouse gig in
Camden Town with Pink Floyd. He resigned after editing 12
issues, stating that he was in danger of breaking down. In
truth, his ability to work long hours and in a focused
manner was suffering because he had become a regular user of
heroin and other drugs.
In 1969 McGrath's poems featured in Horovitz's definitive
1960s anthology Children of Albion, and he returned to
Glasgow to study English and drama at the university. Here
he encountered a new wave of poets such as the young
socialist Tom Leonard and a fellow Zen aficionado, Alan
Spence.
McGrath's addiction demons were now beaten, and he plunged
himself into the world of theatre. For the rest of his life
he was both a prolific playwright and an inspiration to
other writers for the stage. In 1972 he was musical director
for Billy Connolly's The Great Northern Welly Boot Show,
playing the piano on stage.
He was an excellent jazz pianist and learnt a great deal
from Connolly's exuberant celebration of shipyard work. "I'd
been watching," he said, "how the actors would build their
comic business . . . Being on stage with Billy Connolly, you
couldn't help but notice they were so much into rhythms. I
could tell from the way the actors were hitting the rhythms
of the speech whether they were going to get a laugh or
not - or how big the laugh was going to be."
McGrath's own subsequent dramatic work was often labelled
Brechtian, occasionally sub-Brechtian, but the spirit and
form of his craft came from music hall and the
no-holds-barred rapport between performer and audience that
was such a feature of Connolly's work. The GNWBS has been
seen as the first great event of the coming "alternative"
wave of comedy.
McGrath became artistic director of Glasgow's Third Eye
Centre (1974-77), a role he filled with great energy and a
generous capacity for bringing out the best in others. He
also co-founded the Glasgow Theatre Club in 1978, which was
to become the basis of the new Tron Theatre.
Capturing the magical influence of McGrath's Third Eye
Centre on Glasgow's young writers and artists, Anna
Burnside, the journalist, said: "The Third Eye Centre was a
place of mystery and wonder. It was home to impenetrable art
exhibitions and vernacular poetry readings and a bookshop
full of pictures of naked men. It was full of the kind of
grown-ups I wanted to be when I grew up . . . I loved it. I
could buy a cup of tea and a fruit scone and feel that I,
too, was part of the avant-garde."
McGrath's own first success as a playwright was Laurel and
Hardy (1976), a charming work that is still regularly
performed. McGrath collaboration with the Glasgow former
gangster Jimmy Boyle. He exhibited Boyle's prison sculptures
and a play, The Hardman (1977), was also successful, but
more popular with critics than with many Glaswegians, for
whom Boyle was a controversial figure.
His 1979 play Animal, which consists of apes making ape-like
noises, attracted much notice, and remains very much of its
time. Other works include Buchanan (1993), the story of the
Scottish boxer Ken Buchanan, and The Dream Train (1999), a
haunting parable of dream and reality, based on Bach's
Goldberg Variations.
McGrath also wrote for television and radio, and mentored
new dramatists through his position as a literary director
of the Scottish Arts Council. He had strong links with the
Edinburgh Traverse Theatre, touring Scotland with the
company, and with the Lyceum, where he met his future
partner, Ella Wildridge.
McGrath suffered a stroke in 2003, and in 2004 became
Emeritus Director of Playwrights' Studio Scotland, an
organisation designed to carry on the work McGrath put into
supporting other writers. Vicky Featherstone, artistic
director of the National Theatre of Scotland, recalled him
at the time as "curious, childlike and instinctive with a
fierce and tireless intellect".
He is survived by his partner, Ella Wildridge, and by his
three daughters by his former wife, Maureen.
Tom McGrath, poet, playwright and theatre director, was born
on October 23, 1940. He died of liver cancer on April 29,
2009, aged 68