Author and playwright best known for his literary drama Tom and Viv
Michael Hastings, who has died aged 74, shot to prominence in the first wave of new playwrights at the Royal Court in the 1950s. His best known play, Tom and Viv, about the difficult marriage of Ts Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood, was presented there in 1984, by which time he was well established as a novelist, biographer and author of short stories. He was an unclassifiable writer, despite his sporadic allegiance over the years to the Royal Court. Much of his work is imbued with his experience of travelling in Spain, Kenya and Brazil. The fractured domestic relationships which he documented in Tom and Viv, and in his last West End play, Calico (2004), reflect his own difficult childhood and a lifetime interest in psychoanalysis.
Hastings was brought up by his mother, Marie, in a council flat in Brixton, south London.
Michael Hastings, who has died aged 74, shot to prominence in the first wave of new playwrights at the Royal Court in the 1950s. His best known play, Tom and Viv, about the difficult marriage of Ts Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood, was presented there in 1984, by which time he was well established as a novelist, biographer and author of short stories. He was an unclassifiable writer, despite his sporadic allegiance over the years to the Royal Court. Much of his work is imbued with his experience of travelling in Spain, Kenya and Brazil. The fractured domestic relationships which he documented in Tom and Viv, and in his last West End play, Calico (2004), reflect his own difficult childhood and a lifetime interest in psychoanalysis.
Hastings was brought up by his mother, Marie, in a council flat in Brixton, south London.
- 12/1/2011
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
A Dandy in Aspic (1968) is Anthony Mann's last film, or perhaps not: he died during production, and the remaining footage, including the film's ending, was shot under the direction of the star, Laurence Harvey. Original author and screenwriter Derek Marlowe wrote of Harvey's contribution, "He directed his own mis-talent, changed it and the script – which is rather like Mona Lisa touching up her portrait while Leonardo is out of the room." Which is the first of many problems the film presents in the path of anyone trying to appreciate it.
Even those who decry the auteur theory (and I've been known to do so myself, depending on whether I'm being employed as a screenwriter or director) may admit, if pressed, that the director is the only person suitably placed to oversee every aspect of a film and ensure a measure of balance and coordination: in other words, the...
Even those who decry the auteur theory (and I've been known to do so myself, depending on whether I'm being employed as a screenwriter or director) may admit, if pressed, that the director is the only person suitably placed to oversee every aspect of a film and ensure a measure of balance and coordination: in other words, the...
- 8/12/2010
- MUBI
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