Robin Hawdon’s plays include some of the theatre’s best known comedies, playing in many countries and in diverse languages.
Over the last decade there have been productions in mainstream theatres in New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Bonn, Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Krakow, Sydney, Zurich, Johannesburg, Russia, Scandinavia, Italy, Turkey, etc.
“….most enduring comedies on the international theatre circuit…. staple diet of stock and amateur theatres everywhere.” Amazon editorial.
Here are described a number of the best known plays, together with extracts from their international reviews, and short dialogue examples from each text.
Hawdon is also a serious novelist and screenwriter. Find here descriptions of his film scripts and novels with many 5 star Amazon reviews.
(See under Plays etc)
Read More About Robin
On screen
For two decades Robin Hawdon was a successful actor, whilst plying a parallel trade as a playwright. In his early twenties, his face became well known to British television viewers through regular appearances in such series as ‘Play For Today’, ‘Armchair Theatre’, ‘Compact’, ‘Flying Swan’, ‘Robin’s Nest’, etc.
Hawdon later co-starred with Michael Crawford in the ITV sit-com ‘Chalk and Cheese’. He made a number of films – starring in ‘When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth’ and the spoof James Bond movie ‘Zeta One’.
Robin was also scheduled to film test for the part of the real James Bond, but this was cancelled when Roger Moore accepted the role.
On stage
On stage, Robin Hawdon was seen in several roles in London’s West End. He also played a number of classical leads around the country, such as Hamlet, Henry V and Henry Higgins in ‘Pygmalion’.
Hawdon curtailed his acting in 1980 to concentrate on his writing and directing careers.
Playwright
As a writer, his early plays Barn Dance, The Secret, and The Hero were seen at such venues as the Hampstead Theatre and the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals. The first major commercial success for Hawdon was The Mating Game which achieved a long run at London’s Apollo Theatre and has subsequently played in over thirty countries around the world.
This was followed by other much performed and published plays such as Birthday Suite, Revenge, Don’t Rock The Boat, Perfect Wedding and the huge success of Don’t Dress for Dinner (based loosely on an early French play by Marc Camoletti) which ran in the West End for six years, and has played all over America, Australia, Canada and the English speaking world. “A better-constructed farce than Boeing-Boeing.” New York Times
More recently his play God And Stephen Hawking, about the phenomenal advance of modern science and its effect on traditional philosophical thinking, caused something of a stir in the national press when Stephen Hawking himself took objection to be portrayed on stage, despite the fact that the play was seen by most people as a tribute to his extraordinary life and career.
God And Stephen Hawking is published by Josef Weinberger.
Director
Robin Hawdon has also directed a number of stage productions, and in the nineteen-eighties founded the Bath Fringe Festival, and subsequently became Director of the Theatre Royal Bath, one of England’s premier touring theatres.
Author
Robin’s published books include Number Ten, a fast-moving political thriller, Charley Poon’s Pomes, a book of children’s poems, A Rustle In The Grass, an epic Y/A tale in the Watership Down genre, and Survival Of The Fittest, a Darwinian detective story.
Robin Hawdon Latest News
HOW THE WORLD ENDS
(Newly completed and seeking it’s first productions)
Robin Hawdon’s latest stage comedy, and his most anarchic one. Is it a farce, or is it a forecast of a Trumpian cataclysm that might well happen?
Forget Covid. Another Cold War is threatening. The British government urgently boosts its defence spending, along with other Western nations. A minor Whitehall unit accidentally gets a boost of several billion pounds intended for the main Defence department. The egomaniac head of the section refuses to give the money back, and instead blackmails the Government into giving him charge of a new civil defence force. He then takes it upon himself to challenge the enemy’s nuclear threat with his own Dad’s Army resistance, little realising what he is getting himself and his incompetent team into – let alone the rest of the world. If it wasn’t so funny it would be terrifying!
Anyone interested please contact the author’s agent.
Robin Hawdon’s latest novel. An explosive new post-Brexit thriller. Political intrigue, high crime, romantic entanglement, and insights into the power politics within Number Ten Downing Street.
Short listed for the International Thriller Award.
“Akin to taking a breathtaking fairground ride…”
World premiere in Germany, May 2017. Premieres in Australia, Canada in 2018 and USA in 2019
“Hawdon fools the audience with an array of assumptions and his permutation games reach dazzlingly absurd heights”.
The perfect present for kids aged 5 to 11. The children’s poems cover everything from youthful games and exploits, to the problems of growing up, to the ups and downs of school and family life, to the joys of seaside holidays.
For all parents and grand parents who want something new and entertaining with which to occupy those tricky lights-out bedtime moments.
Robin Hawdon has Created a new blog for writers, new and established. Read quick tips on the whole huge business of writing – novels, stage plays and film scripts.