‘Blood Red Roses’: John McGrath and Lukácsian Realism

Abstract

John McGrath spurned the easy road to television fame that seemed open to him early in his career, but remained concerned throughout his life to develop the creative potential of the medium, and to exploit what made it distinctive from the forms of film and theatre in which he was also engaged. Unlike many of his contemporaries, McGrath's work was thus underpinned by a strong sense of the differing qualities of the performing media, and nowhere is this more evident than in Blood Red Roses, which began its life as a stage play for 7:84 Scotland in 1980, was adapted into a three-part television serial for Channel 4 in 1985, and re-edited for the version directed by McGrath for Freeway Films. In exploring the differing sensibilities and structures of the different versions, Stephen Lacey draws on ideas – notably the concept of realism – as formulated by George Lukács largely in relation to yet another genre, that of the novel, in which he often found himself in conflict with the ideas of Bertolt Brecht. Stephen Lacey is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University, and co-director of a major AHRB-funded research project, ‘Cultures of British TV Drama: 1960–82’.