Patrick Hastings - Work As A Playwright

Work As A Playwright

As well as his work as a barrister, Hastings also tried his hand at writing plays. His first play was The Moscow Doctor, based on a novel by Seton Merriman which he had rewritten; it ran for over a week in Brighton. He desired to have an original work performed, however, and to this end wrote The River over a period of 20 years before taking it to St James's Theatre, where it was accepted and performed in June 1925. The play starred Owen Nares and initially went well, but foundered in the second act due to the plot requiring the most popular actors to be taken off stage - the character played by Nares, for example, broke his leg. Reviews compared the plot to something out of the 'Boy's Own Paper. The play lasted only a month before being cancelled, but Hastings was able to sell the film rights for £2,000, and it was turned into a Hollywood film called The Notorious Lady starring Lewis Stone and Barbara Bedford.

His next play was titled Scotch Mist, and was put on at St Martin's Theatre on 26 January 1926 starring Tallulah Bankhead and Godfrey Tearle. After a reviewer named John Ervine wrote a review starting "this is the worst play I have ever seen", the performances bizarrely sold out for weeks later. The play was later called "scandalous and immoral" by the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, and as a result sold out for many months. Emboldened by this success Hastings wrote The Moving Finger, which despite moderately good reviews was not popular, and was withdrawn as a result. In 1930 he wrote Slings and Arrows, which never made it to the West End because when his family, who were familiar with the play, attended the shows, they read out the lines of the characters in bored and dreary voices just before the actors themselves spoke. As a result the play was reduced to chaos.