Since the late 1960s John McGrath has been Britain's foremost political playwright-cum-cultural activist. In his essay collection The Bone Won't Break: On Theatre and Hope in Hard Times (1990) he notes that he was named on the list of the one hundred people in Britain who were the most "dangerous to employ." The list was distributed to companies in England by the right-wing Economic League. "The bone won't break"-a line from a well-known children's game that celebrates the resistance and survival of the underdog-is a metaphor for McGrath's resolute and cheerful belief in working-class resilience, even in the most reactionary of times, at home and abroad.

McGrath's plays for theater and scripts for television and movies have increasingly gained an oppositional political emphasis through the three distinct phases of his career. From 1958 to 1970 he worked mainly in the naturalistic traditions of mainstream theater. In the second phase, covering...