Robin Hawdon (born 28 March 1939) [1] is an English playwright and novelist, with previous additional careers as actor and theatre director. He is best known for his stage comedies and novels. [2]
Robin Hawdon (born 28 March 1939) [1] is an English playwright and novelist, with previous additional careers as actor and theatre director. He is best known for his stage comedies and novels. [2]
Robin Hawdon was educated at Whitgift Grammar School and Uppingham public school. He later attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. [3]
His career as an actor was first established with seasons at Chesterfield, [4] York, Guildford [5] and Bristol Old Vic [6] repertory theatres, and in London's West End in a variety of roles including Roar Like A Dove (Phoenix), The Last Joke (Phoenix), The Easter Man (title role - Globe), Misalliance (Royal Court), One Over The Eight (Duke of Yorks). [5] He also played Hamlet in Cape Town, Prince Hal and Henry V at York, and Henry Higgins in Pygmalion at Salisbury. [5] [2]
He made many TV appearances, in particular in the series Compact (BBC 1964), [7] The Flying Swan (BBC 1965), [8] Spasms (co-star with Jonathan Pryce - Thames TV) and Chalk and Cheese , [9] (co-star with Michael Crawford - Thames TV 1977). He appeared in a number of films, including The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), We Joined the Navy (1962), Bedazzled (1967), Zeta One'(star)' (The Love Factor in the USA) (1969), [10] When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (star) (1970), Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) Episode 26 – The Smile Behind the Veil as Grant (1970), Burke & Hare (1971) and I Want What I Want (1972). [1] [11] He was scheduled by the James Bond producers to film test for the role, but the test was cancelled when Roger Moore finally accepted the part. [2]
His writing career began in the early 1960s with plays produced at the Hampstead Theatre, and The King's Lynn and Salzburg Festivals, and with a nationwide tour of The Hero starring Roy Dotrice. His first large commercial success was with the comedy The Mating Game, [12] which had a long run at London's Apollo Theatre and played in over 30 countries around the world. [2]
Subsequently, a number of comedies played regularly on tour and internationally, many being published by Samuel French [13] and Josef Weinberger. [14] These were followed by his farce Don't Dress for Dinner [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] (loosely based on a French play by Marc Camoletti) which ran for six years in London and subsequently on Broadway, and plays regularly in theatres around the English speaking world. [21]
Hawdon's comedy Birthday Suite has played on and off for over thirty-five years across Europe, as it was first played in 1983 at the Redgrave Theatre, Farnham. [22] [23] [24] His comedy Shady Business played in Paris for five months at the Michodière Theatre. His most globally performed comedy, with several hundred productions across thirty countries, is Perfect Wedding [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]
His straight play, God And Stephen Hawking, [30] based on Hawking’s life and his best-selling book A Brief History of Time , toured the UK in 2000 starring Robert Hardy and Stephen Boxer. [31]
His play, "The Lion & The Unicorn', about an extraordinary encounter between Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain at the start of World War II, was premiered at Theatre Royal Winchester in October 2024, and then planned for further production in 2025.
He has written several novels, notably A Rustle In The Grass [32] [33] [34] [35] (Hutchinson), and Survival Of The Fittest [36] [37] [38] [39] (Strategic Publishing). 'Number Ten' political thriller short-listed for the International Thriller Prize [40]
His memoir Almost Famous (2021) was published on Amazon. [41] [42]
Among his latest stage comedies are Stage Fright and A Night in Provence. Stage Fright is also known as Coup de Grace and in the United States as Diamonds and Divas. The comedy was premiered in Germany, in 2017 and later played in Australia and Canada. [43] [44] [45] [46]
A Night in Provence premiered in Germany and United Kingdom and later played in Zürich, Switzerland and Massachusetts, United States. [47] [48] [49]
Hawdon directed various plays in the provinces and in London, including The Magic Of Young Houdini [50] (Phoenix), Suez (Savoy). He founded the Bath Fringe Festival [51] in the 1980s and subsequently became Director of Bath Theatre Royal, where he created what later became the Ustinov Theatre, one of UK's most distinguished studio theatres. [2]
He was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, the son of Bunty (née Middleton) and James Hawdon, a businessman. [52] At the age of eight his family moved to Surrey where he lived for most of his school years. After graduating from RADA he lived in London for twenty years, after which he decided to curtail his acting career and concentrate on writing, and he and his family moved to Bath, Somerset. [2]
In 1968, he married actress and psychoanalyst Sheila Davies with whom he has two daughters. [52]
Hawdon lives between Bath, the South of France, and Australia.
Harvey Forbes Fierstein is an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter, known for his distinctive gravelly voice. He gained notice for his theater work in Torch Song Trilogy, winning both the Tony Award for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play. He went on to win the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for La Cage aux Folles, then Best Actor in a Musical for playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, a role he reprised for the Hairspray Live! television special.
Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. His awards include three Tony Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as being "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. It has been adapted for opera, stage, screen and musical theatre numerous times worldwide. In the centuries following its premiere, the play's title has entered the popular English lexicon as an idiom for "an event or series of events made ridiculous by the number of errors that were made throughout".
Ethan Phillips is an American actor. He is best known for his television roles as Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager and PR man Pete Downey on Benson.
Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director. He won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. He also received Obie Awards for his role in The End of the Day and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. Rees was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in November 2015.
Dinner theater is a form of entertainment that combines a restaurant meal with a staged play or musical. "Dinner and a show" can also refer to a restaurant meal in combination with live concert music, where patrons listen to a performance during a break in the meal. In the case of a theatrical performance, sometimes the play is incidental entertainment, secondary to the meal. In the style of a night club, the play may be the main feature of the evening, with dinner less important or optional. Dinner theater requires the management of three distinct entities: a live theater, a restaurant and, usually, a bar.
Joseph Mantello is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen. He first gained prominence for his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Tony Kushner's two-part epic play Angels in America (1993–1994), for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination. He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).
André Robin De Shields is an American actor, singer, dancer, director, and choreographer. He has received numerous accolades including an Emmy Award, Grammy Award, and Tony Award.
Spencer Kayden is an American actress, comedian and writer. Kayden played Little Sally in the Broadway musical Urinetown and was a cast member on sketch comedy series MADtv. She also voiced Mrs. Pepper on Blue's Clues, taking over the role from Penelope Jewkes after the first season.
Butley is a play by Simon Gray set in the office of an English lecturer at a university in London, England. The title character, a T. S. Eliot scholar, is an alcoholic who loses his wife and his close friend and colleague – and possibly male lover – on the same day. The action of the dark comedy takes place over several hours on the same day during which he bullies students, friends and colleagues while falling apart at the seams. The play won the 1971 Evening Standard Award for Best Play.
Edward John David Redmayne is an English actor. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Olivier Awards.
Don't Dress for Dinner is an adaptation of a two-act play titled Pyjama Pour Six by French playwright Marc Camoletti, who wrote Boeing-Boeing. It ran in London for six years and opened on Broadway in 2012.
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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a comedy play written by Christopher Durang. The story revolves around the relationships of three middle-aged single siblings, two of whom live together, and takes place during a visit by the third, Masha, who supports them. They discuss their lives and loves, argue, and Masha threatens to sell the house. Some of the show's elements were derived from works of Anton Chekhov, including several character names and sibling relationships, the play's setting in a country house with a vestigial cherry orchard, the performance of an "avant-garde" play by one of the main characters, and the themes of old vs. new generations, real vs. assumed identities, the challenges of a woman growing older after successes in a career that seems to be ending, the hope and carelessness of youth, intrafamilial rivalries, and the possible loss of an ancestral home.
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Dominique Morisseau is an American playwright and actress from Detroit, Michigan. She has written more than nine plays, three of which are part of a cycle titled The Detroit Project. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018.
Significant Other is an American play written by Joshua Harmon, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2015, followed by a Broadway production at the Booth Theatre in Spring 2017.
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