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Roger Hall is New Zealand's most successful
playwright, having written some 25 plays, the books for four musicals, and more
than 60 sitcom episodes for television.
His first play, Glide Time, was a huge hit throughout New Zealand and
Australia (produced there under the title of Flexi-Time), exposing as it
did the foibles of a group of lower echelon bureaucrats. His second play,
Middle Age Spread, covered the hopes, fears and follies of NZ's middle-aged
middle classes ("people like me").
Middle Age Spread went to the West End where it ran for 15 months and won
the Comedy of the Year Award for 1979. (This year it has been successfully
revived throughout New Zealand.) Most of his subsequent comedies have been big
box-office attractions in New Zealand, with several being performed overseas.
One of his latest plays, Take a Chance on Me, is scheduled to have a
try-out season in Hampstead, London, in November of this year.
This year he won an award for Best Comedy Script as a co-writer for a satirical
series, Spin Doctors, and in August he received one of the country's top
honours, being made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. |
