Dusty Hughes

Career

In the early seventies he was Theatre Editor of Time Out and helped to establish that magazine’s theatre coverage as an alternative voice. He then joined the Bush Theatre as Artistic Director and with Simon Stokes and Jenny Topper developed it as a venue for new writing and directed new plays by Snoo Wilson, Tony Bicat, Julia Kearsley, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Barker, Ron Hutchinson and Ken Campbell. His subsequents plays have been seen at the National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and London, The Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre, The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, The Bush, the Donmar and in the West End as well as in Europe and America.

He has worked extensively in television

He has also written for many other series including “Silent Witness” and “Lewis” and most recently the British Broadcasting Corporation’s “The Musketeers” (2015). Early Hughes was born in Boston, Lincolnshire the son of Harold Hughes a schoolmaster and Peggy (nee Holland) a marriage guidance counsellor and youth theatre producer.

Hughes was educated at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Wakefield and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is thinly disguised in James’s autobiography “May Week Was In June” as Rusty Gates.

Grrr Edinburgh, 1968

In At The Death, Bush Theatre, London, 1978

Commitments Bush Theatre, London, 1980

Heaven and Hell Edinburgh, 1981

Breach Of The Peace, Bush Theatre, London, 1982

Moliere.

Or, The Union Of Hypocrites, Stratford-on-Avon, 1982

Bad Language, Hampstead Theatre, London, 1983

Philistines, Stratford-on-Avon, 1985

Futurists Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre, 1986, directed by Richard Eyre. Published script

Jenkin"s Ear Royal Court Theatre, London. 1987, Published script

Metropolis Piccadilly Theatre, London, 1989, (a musical based on Fritz Language"s 1927 silent movie Metropolis)

A Slip of the Tongue Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, 1992

Helpless Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London, 2000, directed by Robin Lefevre.

Commitments (Play for Today, 1982)

The Secret Agent, 1992—an adaptation of Joseph Conrad"s novel

The Brief, 2004-2005.

Achievements

• In 1980 his first play Commitments (which preceded the unrelated Roddy Doyle novel and subsequent film of the same name) won him the London Theatre Critics Most Promising Playwright Award. He was joint winner of the Writer’s Guild Award for Best Drama Series for “Between The Lincolnshire” and created “The Brief” for Independent Television as well as adapting Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” for BBC1.

Membership

At Cambridge he was a member of Footlights where he appeared in the revue “Supernatural Gas” (directed by Clive James) as Tsar Nicolas II and a seven foot high Himachal Pradesh Sauce bottle.