John Clifford Hall (26 June 1925 – 25 March 2001) was an English playwright who wrote over thirty plays for theatre, television and radio.[1][2]: 232
Hall was educated at Queens College, Oxford,[3][4] where he studied under C. S. Lewis. Study for his MA was interrupted by service in the RNVR. For this he studied Japanese and worked in Intelligence at Bletchley Park.[5][6]
His first produced play World Behind Your Back, was in collaboration with actor William Eedle, at the Mercury Theatre in London in 1952.[7][8]
Albert Finney starred in one of his most successful plays The Lizard on the Rock, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre[9]: dust jacket [10][11][12][13][14] of which Michael Billington wrote: 'Above all, I remember him [Finney] in The Lizard on the Rock by John Hall, which required him to be shot at point-blank range in the stomach: as he suddenly crumpled, uttering cat-like cries, the critic Kenneth Tynan in The Observer described it as "the best fall since Feuillère", who was then queen of the French stage'.[15]
The Lizard on the Rock was well-received.[16][17][18] It is a story based around '...an industrialist – a Senator – who is prospecting for water...'[14] '...in the Western Australian desert... the central character [is] outwardly a man of success and power, but faced with the collapse of his achievements...'[11] and the realisation that 'Life cannot depend upon "the blandishments of power; the blind man groping among the useless treasure.'"[2]: 34 [9]: 22
Sir John Gielgud was quoted as saying that the play contained 'a great deal of power and originality'.[9]: dust jacket and the playwright Christopher Fry wrote: 'Mr Hall's mind is his own; what he has to say is his own...'[9]: dust jacket The review in The Stage for the Birmingham production of the play read: 'an interesting journey through a variety of tense scenes, each peopled with characters that might in turn be the focal point of the play themselves... Mr. Hall... gives them an aura pregnant with possibilities.'[10] The International Theatre Annual described the blank verse in The Lizard on the Rock as 'Eliotesque'.[2]: 35
Hall wrote his play Exit, Joe, Running influenced by 'the marked contrasts of life at Oxford... and Keele [Universities]... The leading character – within a few months of leaving academia – writes a paper titled "39 Reasons Why University Is No Good"'.[19]
Hall considered the most important playwrights of the 1960s were '...Harold Pinter, Christopher Fry, Robert Bolt, John Arden, John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Peter Schaeffer and Charles Wood'.[1] He was influenced by Christopher Fry during the resurrection of verse drama, and by Anton Chekhov. One of his own favourite plays was Everly, which never got beyond a rehearsed reading.[1] Wrang-Gaites, written for his sons to enjoy,[20]: 3 was originally performed by the York Theatre Royal Activists in 1973[20]: 5 and was later set to music at Chichester University.[21] Of Wrang-Gaites, playwright Christopher Fry wrote: 'It is as though the traditional Mummer's Play of St George and the Dragon had spread and ramified and leapt into the twentieth century.'[20]: 7
