The Innocent is a 1979 play by Scottish playwright Tom McGrath

Tom McGrath (playwright)

This article is about the Scottish playwright. For other people named Tom McGrath, see Thomas McGrath.Tom McGrath was a Scottish playwright and jazz pianist....

. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...

 at the Warehouse Theatre

Warehouse Theatre

The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing theatre with one hundred seats in the centre of the London Borough of Croydon, south London, England based in an oak-beamed former cement Victorian warehouse...

 in London, opening on 24 May 1979. The production was directed by Howard Davies and starred Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev...

.

The play is autobiographical, and concerns McGrath's psychedelic drug and heroin use in the counter-culture 1960s as an underground poet, writer, and musician. The protagonist Joe Maguire is an idealistic intellectual and existentialist, a jazz-playing underground newspaper editor, who is drawn into heroin use and becomes a junkie.

Original cast

Joe Maguire ... Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev...

Suzie ... Ruby Wax

Ruby Wax

Ruby Wax is a BAFTA nominated American comedian who made a career in the United Kingdom as part of the alternative comedy scene in the 1980s.-Early life:...

Rick ... David Lyon

David Lyon (actor)

David Lyon is a British stage, television, and film actor.Since 1976, Lyon has performed regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company. With them he has appeared in plays which include: Much Ado About Nothing, King John, Henry VI, The Winter's Tale, Troilus and Cressida, The Taming of the Shrew,...

Heggie ... Hilton McRae

Hilton McRae

Hilton McRae is a Scottish actor in the fields of theatre, television and film.-Career:McRae was part of the radical theatre group 7:84 before graduating from Edinburgh University, and by 1977 he had joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. His most mainstream American film was his role as Green...

Heggie's Maw ... Eve Pearce

Eve Pearce

Eve Pearce is a Scottish actress. She has performed in many Royal Shakespeare Company productions.-Early life:Eve Pearce was born on 17 April 1929 in Aberdeen to a very poor family and was brought up in a one-roomed tenement, her mother dying when she was seven years old. When she was twelve her...

Malachie ... Anthony Higgins

Anthony Higgins (actor)

Anthony Higgins is an English actor.-Career:Higgins started to play in school theatre in England. After graduation, he studied at the school of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company. In 1967 he became a professional stage actor. He received positive reviews for his Romeo in William...

Andy ... David Bradley

David Bradley (actor)

David Bradley is an English character actor. He has recently become known for playing the caretaker of Hogwarts, Argus Filch, in the Harry Potter film franchise.-Life and career :...

Jay ... Paul Moriarty

Brenda ... Sheridan Fitzgerald

Kate ... Avril Carson

Pie Mackay ... Mark Windsor

Sonny ... Alan Cody

Dr. Smith ... Darlene Johnson

External links

• McGrath obituary – The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  
• McGrath obituary – The Independent
  The Independent
  The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...