Michael Hastings

Michael Gerald Hastings (2 September 1938 – 19 November 2011)^[1] was a British playwright, screen-writer, and occasional novelist and poet.

He is probably best known for his 1984 play about the poet T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, Tom & Viv, which became 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 Tom & Viv, 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. Tussy Is Me appeared in 1971. A poetry collection, Love Me, Lambeth, and Other Poems appeared in 1961.

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

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Michael Hastings". London: Telegraph. 22 November 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8907906/Michael-Hastings.html. 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

• Michael Hastings' home page
• At playwright database.