Michael Hastings (playwright)
{{Use British English|date=October 2015}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2014}}{{Short description|British playwright and writer (1938 – 2011)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Michael Hastings
| birth_name = Michael Gerald Hastings
| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1938|9|2}}
| birth_place = London, England, United Kingdom
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|2011|11|19|1938|9|2}}
| death_place = United Kingdom
| occupation = Writer, playwright
}}
Michael Gerald Hastings (2 September 1938 – 19 November 2011){{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8907906/Michael-Hastings.html |title=Michael Hastings |work=The Daily Telegraph |date= 22 November 2011|accessdate=22 November 2011 |location=London}} was a British playwright, screenwriter, and occasional novelist and poet.
He is best known for his 1984 stage play and 1994 screenplay Tom & Viv, about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood.
Biography
Hastings was born in London, UK. 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.Kenneth Allsop, The Angry Decade, London: Peter Owen (1964), p. 132.Sidney Campion, The World of Colin Wilson, F. Muller (1962), p. 147.
Hastings 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 (1998) and The Nightcomers (1971, based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw and starring Marlon Brando). Hastings also wrote two libretti for Michael Nyman: Man and Boy: Dada (2003, assisted by Victoria Hardie) and Love Counts (2005).
Hastings' 1950s play The Cutting of the Cloth saw its world premiere at the Southwark Playhouse in London, from 11 March till 4 April 2015. The cast were Alexis Caley, Andy de la Tour, James El-Sharawy, Paul Rider and Abigail Thaw, directed by Tricia Thorns.Southwark Playhouse playbill, 2015.
Hastings 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. As a poet, he published one collection, Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems, in 1961, and his work appeared in Michael Horovitz's 1969 anthology Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain.Robert Sheppard, [https://books.google.com/books?id=oCooUyd7iPkC&dq=michael+hastings+children+of+albion&pg=PA42 The Poetry of Saying: British Poetry and Its Discontents 1950-2000], Liverpool University Press, 2005, p. 42.
Selected works
=Theatre=
- Don't Destroy Me (1956)
- Yes And After (1957)
- The World's Baby (1964)
- For the West (Congo) (1965)
- Blue as His Eyes the Tin Helmet He Wore (1966)
- Lee Harvey Oswald: A Far Mean Streak of Independence Brought on by Negleck (also known as The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald) (1967)
- The Silence of Saint-Just (1972)
- The Cutting of the Cloth (written 1973)
- For the West (Uganda) (1977)
- Gloo Joo (1978)
- Full Frontal (1979)
- Carnival War a Go Hot (1979)
- Murder Rap (1980)
- Midnight at the Starlight (1980)
- Tom & Viv (1984)
- Calico (2004)
=Television=
- Gloo Joo (1979)
=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
{{Reflist|30em}}
External links
- {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005133022/http://michaelhastings.co.uk/pages/about_michael/biography.htm |date=5 October 2011 |title=Michael Hastings' home page }}
- [https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadID=00325 Michael Hastings Papers] at the Harry Ransom Center
- [http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsH/hastings-michael.html Profile at Doollee.com]
- {{IMDb name|0368607|Michael Hastings}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20160310004024/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2ba162634e/ Michael Hastings] at the British Film Institute{{better source needed|reason=Help request: a live link can be searched for at https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/search/expert - if available, replace the archive URL with the live link. Or if none found, remove this 'better source needed' template. | date=October 2023}}
{{Angry young men}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hastings, Michael}}
Category:20th-century English dramatists and playwrights
Category:20th-century English male writers
Category:People educated at Alleyn's School
Category:English screenwriters