In his long and highly productive career Michael Hastings has won many prestigious awards, has had his plays performed at the National Theatre, by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and on television, and has achieved popular success in the West End; but he has attracted sparse critical evaluation. The varied and intermittent nature of his work, the production of his plays mainly in smaller theaters, and a lack of revivals may have contributed to his neglect by the critics. While many of Hastings's plays are firmly on the political left, he has avoided making them ideological vehicles. Dark humor, fantasies, dream sequences, an imaginative use of language and idiom, sharp cultural observation, and an idiosyncratic approach to social issues give his plays a disturbing and thought-provoking quality.

Michael Gerald Hastings was born on 2 September 1938 to Max Emmanuel Gerald Hastings, a tailor, and Marie Katharine Hastings, née Griffiths...