Michael Hastings (playwright)

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Michael Hastings
Born Michael Gerald Hastings
(1938-09-02)September 2, 1938
London, England, United Kingdom
Died November 19, 2011(2011-11-19) (aged 73)
United Kingdom
Occupation Writer, playwright

Michael Gerald Hastings (2 September 1938 – 19 November 2011)[1] was a British playwright, screen-writer, and occasional novelist and poet. He is best known for his 1984 play about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Tom & Viv, which was adapted into a motion picture released in 1994.

Hastings was born in London. His early plays (Don't Destroy Me (1956), Yes And After (1957)) reflected the influence of the Angry Young Men movement and his brief involvement with the circle surrounding Colin Wilson.[2][3]

He later enjoyed mainstream West End success with Gloo Joo (1978), a farce about a West Indian threatened with deportation from the United Kingdom, which won the Evening Standard Comedy of the Year Award in 1979. He wrote numerous stage plays, television screen plays, and in addition to the Tom & Viv film, scripts for two motion pictures, The American and The Nightcomers (based on Henry James' short story "The Turn of the Screw" and starring Marlon Brando). He also wrote two libretti for Michael Nyman, Man and Boy: Dada (2003, assisted by Victoria Hardie) and Love Counts (2005).

He published his first novel, The Game in 1957, followed by The Frauds. His 1970 novel Tussy Is Me - about Eleanor Marx - won him the "Somerset Maugham Award". A poetry collection, Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems appeared in 1961.

Hastings died aged 73 on 19 November 2011.[1]

Selected works

Theatre

  • Don't Destroy Me (1956)
  • Yes And After (1957)
  • Lee Harvey Oswald: A Far Mean Streak of Independence Brought on by Negleck (also known as The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald) (1966)
  • For the West (Uganda) (1977)
  • Gloo Joo (1978)
  • Tom & Viv (1984)
  • Calico (2004)

Books

Fiction
  • The Game (1957)
  • The Frauds (1960)
  • Tussy Is Me (1970)
  • The Nightcomers (1971; based on his own screenplay)
  • And in the Forest the Indians (1975)
  • Bart's Mornings and Other Tales of Modern Brazil (1975) (short stories)
Non-fiction
  • Rupert Brooke: The Handsomest Young Man in England (1967)
  • Sir Richard Burton: A Biography (1978)
Poetry
  • Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems (1961)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Michael Hastings". London: Telegraph. 22 November 2011. Retrieved 2011-11-22. 
  2. ↑ Kenneth Allsop, The Angry Decade, P. Owen (1964), p132
  3. ↑ Sidney Campion, The World of Colin Wilson, F. Muller (1962), p147

External links

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