David Halliwell

Who is David Halliwell?

David William Halliwell was a British dramatist.

Halliwell attended Huddersfield College of Art as an art student, but was expelled for a time from the institution, and later switched to acting at RADA. In the early 1960s he worked as an actor in rep and was a stage manager at the Nottingham Playhouse for a time.

His experiences at the Huddersfield College were the basis for his earliest produced and best remembered play, Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs. In this play Malcolm Scrawdyke, a Hitlerite figure, plots revenge against authority for his college expulsion by forming the Party of Dynamic Erection with his three acolytes. "The Nazis made a big impression on people of my age", Halliwell recalled. "They almost destroyed Europe. But as well as being pretty threatening they were also seen as a laughing stock even during the war." The play won Halliwell the Evening Standard's Most Promising Playwright Award in 1967.

Malcolm's premier production at the Unity Theatre in 1965 was directed by Mike Leigh with Halliwell himself in the central role of Malcolm. John Hurt featured as the character in a slightly later West End production and the feature film version. A successful revival in 1999 starred Ewan McGregor.