Roger Hall, born in 1939, is the most successful playwright of his generation and he was born in Essex. The most authoritative account of his life is his own, given in the Radio New Zealand series ‘Hallmarks’ (1995). He was educated at University College School, Hampstead (1952–55), before following his father into insurance.

A desire to write and to act was kindled by his father’s talent as an impersonator, frequent family visits to the theatre, especially revues, and by his love of post-war British radio comedies such as ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’. But the opportunity to do both came only after Hall moved to New Zealand in 1958.

He appeared in amateur productions while working (still in insurance) in Wellington in the late 1950s. After a brief return visit to England (via Australia and India) in 1960–62, Hall attended Wellington Teachers’ College and then Victoria University, where he completed a BA. At the same time he participated as an actor and script-writer in various revues, both on campus and downtown.

He began teaching, at Berhampore School, Wellington, in 1966, and the short stories and plays he wrote for use in the classroom were the beginnings of a prolific output of children’s writing which has continued ever since, most of it published by educational specialists Shortland Publications.

He returned to Victoria University in 1967 to complete an MA, and then resumed teaching at Berhampore, all the while maintaining his involvement in local theatre, especially revue. His debut as a scriptwriter for television came in 1969, when he collaborated with Joseph Musaphia on New Zealand’s first television comedy series, ‘In View of the Circumstances’.

Resigning from teaching to become a freelance writer in 1970, he achieved some stage successes as well as television credits in both New Zealand and Australia, but by 1972 - now married with one child - he resumed the security of life with a salary in the education sector, this time as editor of Education in School Publications, a job he held until 1975.

By 1975 he had produced sufficient work to qualify for an Arts Council travel grant, which took him to England and America. The Eugene O’Neill Drama Workshop in Connecticut proved to be a decisive influence. On his return to New Zealand he wrote Glide Time, and saw it progress triumphantly after its Circa (Wellington) première on 11 August 1976. It became the first publication in the Price Milburn - Victoria University Press series of New Zealand Play scripts.

Glide Time set the pattern for most of Hall’s work, a series of gently satirical sketches linked by running gags and the gradual revelation of the characters’ generally dismal predicaments. The blend of comedy and pathos probably owes much to Tony Hancock, though Alan Ayckbourn is often cited, as is Chekhov, to whom Hall paid tribute in A Dream of Sussex Downs (1986).

In 1977, Hall moved to Dunedin as Burns Fellow (1977–78), and then stayed on as a half-time teaching fellow in the university’s English department. He relinquished this position in 1994, publishing his tribute to the university (Otago, the University, with photographs by Bill Nichol, 1994), and moving to Auckland early in 1995.

Also in 1977 came Middle Age Spread, his best-known play, thanks to the film version and a successful West End production. He found it particularly difficult to write. Running a writing workshop at Otago University in 1977 helped him to turn these difficulties to account in State of the Play - a play about playwriting. Hall’s own favourite, though by no means his most successful play commercially, it premièred at Wellington’s Downstage Theatre in 1978.

Fifty-Fifty, the most dismal of his straight plays and the only one set in England, in a vain attempt to woo English entrepreneurs, followed in 1981, and Hot Water, his only true farce, in 1982. Other work at this time included the ‘Gliding On’ scripts for radio and television and three other radio plays, ‘The Quiz’, ‘Last Summer’ and ‘Hark Hark the Harp’.

A certain amount of experimentation is evident in Hall’s work of the mid-1980s. In 1983 he collaborated with Philip Norman (music) and A.K. Grant (lyrics) as author of the book for Footrot Flats, based on Murray Ball’s syndicated cartoon strip. The same team produced the equally successful Love Off the Shelf (a satire on popular romantic fiction) in 1986. Norman was again Hall’s musical partner in the country-and-western spoof Making It Big (1991), while Where Would a Songwriter Be Without Love? (1995) is a tribute to Norman’s music, devised by Hall.

A more radical departure from his usual bitter-sweet sitcom formula was the flawed expressionistic one-acter The Rose (1981), a thinly veiled attack on New Zealand’s Prime Minister of the time, Robert *Muldoon. It was followed by a full-length problem play about home education, Multiple Choice, completed at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, where Hall held a writing fellowship in 1983.

In Market Forces (1995) Hall tests the old maxim that ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, depicting the characters of Glide Time and ‘Gliding On’ in the environment of the restructured public service.

While Hall’s plays are funny, their comedy is that of sorrowful resilience, like Chekhov’s, and of serious social criticism, for all their unfashionable willingness to treat the middle classes with some sympathy. His one-liners can show truth about human manners as well as wit.

correct at July 2003