Jeffrey Hatcher

Jeffrey Hatcher (born 1958) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is known for writing the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty. 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). He has also written for the mystery TV series Columbo and E! Entertainment Television.

Career

Hatcher's original works have been performed across the United States, including on Broadway, as well as internationally. In 2023, American Theatre magazine noted that Hatcher ties for the fifth most-produced playwright in America, with 13 plays in production. The 2022 play "DIAL M FOR MURDER" was 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. 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 TV 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)