Alan Seymour Biography

Australian playwright and film and theatre critic, born in Perth. Seymour achieved recognition with his surreal play Swamp Creatures (1957), which is set in a Gothic mansion and concerns two sisters, one of whom experiments in the creation of monster insects. More naturalistic, and less characteristic, is his best-known play, The One Day of the Year (1960), which takes place on Anzac Day and explores themes of national identity and social change through the conflicting views of different generations of an Australian family; it was adapted as a novel in 1967. The Gaiety of Nations (1965), about the Vietnam War, was followed by other plays including A Break in the Music (1966), The Pope and the Pill (1968), The Shattering (1973), and The Float (1980). His novel The Coming Self-Destruction of the United States (1969) concerns racial questions in America. In Britain he received acclaim for his television adaptations of L. P. Hartley's Eustace and Hilda, Antonia White's Frost in May, and John Masefield's The Box of Delights.