Jeffrey Hatcher

American writer

Compleat Female Stage Beauty
Casanova
The Duchess

Jeffrey Hatcher is a much-produced American playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty (2004). He also co-wrote the stage adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie with author Mitch Albom, and Three Viewings, a comedy consisting of three monologues - each of which takes place in a funeral home. He wrote the screenplay Casanova for director Lasse Hallström, as well as the screenplay for The Duchess (2008).^[1] He has also written for the Peter Falk TV series Columbo and E! Entertainment Television.

Career

His many award-winning original plays have been performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally across the US and abroad. In 2023, American Theatre magazine noted that the prolific Hatcher ties for the fifth most-produced playwright in America, with 13 plays in production. Furthermore, his 2022 play DIAL M FOR MURDER is the fifth most produced play in 2023, with 9 productions.

Previously, Hatcher adapted Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, into a play in which actors play multiple roles, and Mr. Hyde is played by four actors, one of whom is female. The adaptation, which has been called "hipper, more erotic, and theatrically intense...definitely not your grandfather's 'Jekyll and Hyde'", was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award for Best Play.^[1]

Some of his other plays include Three Viewings, Scotland Road, A Picasso, Neddy, Korczak's Children, Mercy of a Storm, Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright (with Eric Simonson), and Lucky Duck (with Bill Russell and Henry Kreiger). Hatcher wrote the book for the Broadway musical Never Gonna Dance and the musical, ELLA.

Hatcher is a member and/or alumnus of The Playwrights' Center, The Dramatists Guild of America, Writers Guild of America and New Dramatists.

Work

Plays

Dial M for Murder, 2022 (an adaptation of the Frederick Knott play of the same name, premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego)
The Alchemist, 2021 (an adaptation of the Ben Jonson play of the same name, premiered at The Red Bull Theatre in New York City)
Holmes and Watson, 2018 (originally commissioned and produced by the Arizona Theatre Company)
"Glensheen", 2015 premiered at History Theatre in Saint Paul, MN
To Begin With, 2015 - revived in 2017 (an adaptation of The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens), premiered at the Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis and starred Gerald Charles Dickens
No Name, 2014 (an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins novel, premiered at Carthage College, then Edinburgh Festival Fringe)
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, 2011 (premiered at Arizona Theatre Company)
Ten Chimneys, 2011
Louder Faster, 2011 (co-authored with Eric Simonson, premiered at City Theatre)
Bloody Radio Murders, 2010 (written for a MMW's drama club)
Mrs. Mannerly, NY premiere 2010
Cousin Bette, 2009, (an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette)
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, 2008, (an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, using 4 actors to play the role of Mr. Hyde)
The Government Inspector, 2008, (adapted from Nikolai Gogol)
Armadale, 2007
The Falls, 2006
Korczak's Children, 2006
Murderers, 2005
A Picasso, 2005, (loosely inspired by actual events surrounding the Nazi persecution of "Degenerate art")^[2]
Murder by Poe, 2003, (an adaptation of five stories by Edgar Allan Poe)
Good 'n' Plenty, 2001
Hanging Lord Haw Haw, 2000
To Fool the Eye, 2000, (an adaptation of Jean Anouilh's Léocadia)
Work Song: Three Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, 2000, with Eric Simonson
Compleat Female Stage Beauty, 1999
The Servant of Two Masters, 1999, with Emilo Paolo Landi (adaptation of the Goldoni commedia dell'arte play)
Mother Russia, 1999
Pierre, 1998, (adapted from Pierre: or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville)
What Corbin Knew, 1998
Smash, 1997 (an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Novel An Unsocial Socialist)
The Turn of the Screw, 1996 (adaptation of the novella of the same name by Henry James)
Miss Nelson is Missing!, 1996, (based on the book by Harry Allard and James Marshall)
Scotland Road, 1993

Scripts

Film

The Good Liar, 2019
Mr. Holmes, 2015
The Duchess, 2008
Casanova, 2005 (co-writer)
Stage Beauty, 2004

The Mentalist: Forest Green, 2014
Upstairs, Downstairs: All the Things You Are, 2012
Murder at the Cannes Film Festival, 2000
Columbo: Ashes to Ashes, 1998

Awards and nominations

Edgar Award for Best Play for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (nominated)^[1]

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c "Psychological Thriller" The Union City Reporter; April 11, 2010; Page 13.
^ Blake, J. (October 3, 2012). "Ve haff vays of being unintentionally funny". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved June 22, 2013.

References

Christopher Rawson, "Stage Preview: Prolific Writer's 'Work Song' pushes City Theatre's Limits", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday, November 21, 2004.
Top 20 most-produced playwrights of the 2023-2024 season, American Theater Magazine
The Top 10 most produced plays of the 2023-2024 season, American Theater Magazine