Playwright John Arden has died according to published reports. He was 81.
Arden’s plays include Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1959, in a production that starred Dudley Moore. The work later played New York’s Lucille Lortel Theatre in 1966, earning Arden a Drama Desk Award.
Among his other plays are The Waters of Babylon, Live Like Pigs, This Happy Haven, The Workhouse Donkey: a Vulgar Melodrama, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight: an Exercise in Diplomacy, The Little Gray Home in the West, and Vandaleur’s Folly.
Arden also wrote the novels Silence Among the Weapons: some events at the time of the failure of a republic, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, along with Books of Bale, a fiction of history, and The Emperor’s Whore: seven tall tales for an indecorous toy theatre.
He is survived by his wife and four children.
