John Gay interview by Scott McConnell
- At June 15, 2013
- By TRS
- In Interviews
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The 1958 Film adaptation of Separate Tables staring Rita Hayworth is being screened by BFI as part of their Rita Hayworth season, click here for more details.
‘The Winslow Boy’ heads to Broadway
- At June 10, 2013
- By TRS
- In Events, New York
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Next season, a revival of ‘The Winslow Boy’ will be opening at the Roundabout American Airlines Theatre in New York. It will be starring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Roger Rees and joins two other productions from the Roundabout Theatre Company: Donald Margulies’ ”Dinner With Friends” and Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing”.
‘The Winslow Boy’ is about father who sets out to prove his son’s innocence when he’s accused of theft. Lindsay Pointer, who directed the production at the Old Vic in London will also be returning.
Visit the Roundabout Theatre Company’s website by clicking here.
Less Than Kind – Reviews
- At May 25, 2013
- By TRS
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REVIEW: Less Than Kind, Salisbury Playhouse
9:44am Wednesday 22nd May 2013 in Stage Reviews By Brendan McCusker
Less Than Kind, Salisbury Playhouse
UNPERFORMED since Terence Rattigan wrote it in 1944, this is an interesting revival of his “lost” play Less Than Kind.
Convincingly set in wartime London, Canadian steel magnate John Fletcher (superbly played by William Gaminara from BBC TV’s Silent Witness) is a wealthy industrialist and member of the Tory wartime cabinet.
He lives with his lover Olivia Brown (stylishly performed by Sue Holderness from TV’s Only Fools And Horses) in relaxed comfort with maids and secretaries.
However, Olivia’s teenage son Michael (a smoothly spiky portrayal by Charlie Hamblett) returns home from evacuation with a passionate left-wing philosophy and a deep hatred for everything that his mother’s lover stands for.
Does his mother choose her lover or her son?
With tenuous links to Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “less than kind” is a quote from that play’s opening – this is a thoughtprovoking drama mixed with romantic comedy.
Wartime London is immediately evoked with explosions, searchlights and all-clear sirens, reinforced with convincing 1940s costumes and language – “What a corking idea!”
The stage set is a masterpiece of atmospheric detail, and the play’s themes are as relevant today as when Rattigan created the piece – a desire for a more equal society with “fair shares for all” and a secure welfare state, polarised by established privilege and selfcentredness.
Less Than Kind runs until Saturday.
“Less than Kind” UK National Tour 2013
- At April 11, 2013
- By TRS
- In Events
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We are delighted to announce the UK National Tour of Terence Rattigan’s Lost Comedy “Less than Kind” directed by Adrian Brown.
For details and dates of forthcoming performances throughout this year, please click on the thumbnail picture of the flyer on the right hand side.
The Winslow Boy Review by Charles Spencer
- At March 20, 2013
- By TRS
- In Events, Reviews
- 0
The Winslow Boy – Opening March 2013
- At December 20, 2012
- By TRS
- In Preview
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Terence Rattigan’s pursuit of justice, The Winslow Boy, will open at The Old Vic on 19 March 2013 with previews from XX March. Directed by Lindsay Posner, Rattigan’s powerful play is based on the true story of a father’s fight to clear his son’s name when he is expelled from Naval College after being convicted of theft.
First staged in 1946, the battle between personal principles and conscience and an impenetrable establishment under the media spotlight makes The Winslow Boy as relevant today as it was then.
Fri 8 March – Sat 25 May 2013
Previews: 8-18 March; Press Performance: 19 March at 7pm
Mon–Sat 7.30pm; Wed & Sat 2.30pm
[Please note there are no matinee performances on Sat 9 Mar, Wed 13 Mar or Wed 20 Mar.
There is a matinee performance on Thu 21 Mar at 2.30pm.]
Post Show Discussion: Mon 22 April
TICKETS: £11, £16, £21, £28, £40, £50
Box Office: 0844 871 7628
Why it is Impossible to find the “new” Rattigan
- At November 14, 2012
- By TRS
- In Useful Articles
- 0
She mentions the new production of Pinero’s ‘The Magistrate’ and the recent ‘The Second Mrs Tanqueray’ but says that unlike Pinero’s, Rattigan’s work is “timeless”.
After the Dance Flyer from New York
- At September 06, 2012
- By TRS
- In New York
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French without Tears – Niagara-on-the-lake
- At September 04, 2012
- By TRS
- In Reviews
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While “French Without Tears” continues to be revived in England, it has yet to make an impression on this side of the Atlantic. The 1937 Broadway transfer got decent reviews but closed after an undistinguished three-month run, and the subsequent 1940 film version (which starred Ray Milland) is known only to historians of British cinema. So far as I know, “French Without Tears” hasn’t been produced by any professional theater company in America since its original Broadway run.
That’s why I went up to Canada’s Shaw Festival to see that company’s ultra rare revival. Could the author of “The Deep Blue Sea” and “Separate Tables” really have known how to split the sides of a matinee crowd? The answer—as one of Mr. Rattigan’s more decorous characters might have put it—is decidedly in the affirmative. Not only is “French Without Tears” as funny as anything by Noël Coward or Alan Ayckbourn, but Kate Lynch’s staging is as good as it could possibly be.
“French Without Tears” unfolds in the living room of Miramar, a French boardinghouse that caters to English tourists who want to brush up their French in a cozy seaside setting. Most of its patrons are fresh out of school and headed for business or diplomatic careers. (Fans of the English novelist Anthony Powell, who knew Mr. Rattigan in the ’30s and probably saw “French Without Tears” on the West End, will recall that a similar establishment figures prominently in the first installment of “A Dance to the Music of Time.”) Seeing as how the residents of Miramar include a like number of eligible young men and attractive young women, it stands to reason that high jinks will ensue. So they do, especially when Diana Lake (Robin Evan Willis), a vampy man-teaser, arrives on the scene with the intention of making a minimum of love and a maximum of mischief. Not even P.G. Wodehouse could have cooked up a twistier plot.
French Without Tears
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, 85 Queen St., Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
($45-$90), 800-511-7429, closes Sept. 15
Part of what makes “French Without Tears” so interesting is that for all the play’s fetching frivolity, Mr. Rattigan’s characters are neither as simple nor carefree as they look. His “sophisticated” young gentlemen in particular are sexually naive almost-boys who are all too obviously afraid of women. Even the Hon. Alan Howard (pitch-perfectly played by Ben Sanders), who purports to be the very model of a suave intellectual, is defenseless in the face of a full-court press by the scheming Diana. Moreover, they—and we—are well aware that Europe is on the verge of turning itself upside down, and our consciousness of the coming collapse of the old order that spawned Mr. Rattigan’s characters lends a sharp tang of melancholy to their lunatic cavorting.
Ms. Lynch knows how to wring every laugh out of a script, and the performances of her ensemble cast are without exception both fresh and felt. The long-legged Ms. Willis is hell on a stick, while Julie Martell manages to make something lovely and true out of the potentially ungrateful role of Jacqueline, the good-egg type who longs in vain for Kit (Wade Bogert-O’Brien). William Schmuck’s set is a minor masterpiece of naturalistic detail.
Why on earth should so delicious a play have failed to divert American audiences? Perhaps the problem is that a few of the jokes arise from the widely varying linguistic capacities of the English-speaking characters, one of whom speaks severely fractured French. (Among other things, this benighted soul suffers from the delusion that the French equivalent of “She has ideas above her station” is “Elle a des idées au-dessus de sa gare.“) Fortunately, Mr. Rattigan took great and skillful care to ensure that all but one or two of the bilingual punch lines in “French Without Tears” will make sense to monoglot viewers.
This was my first visit to the Shaw Festival, on two of whose other current productions I’ll report next week. For now, suffice it to say that the small town of Niagara-on-the-Lake is a most agreeable place to see shows, and that the handsome 328-seat Royal George Theatre, which began life as a gilded vaudeville house, is an ideal venue for a show as charming as “French Without Tears.”
So…why not Broadway? We could stand to see a smart, classy British comedy in New York this season. Or next season. Or pretty much any old time.
—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, blogs about theater and the other arts at www.terryteachout.com. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.
Centenary Service for Terence Rattigan
- At May 14, 2012
- By TRS
- In Events
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St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden (The Actors’ Church)
Tuesday 22nd May, 2012, at 11.a.m.
The Sir Terence Rattigan Trust and The Terence Rattigan Society have arranged a special service in The Actors’ Church to mark the centenary year, which ends on Terence Rattigan’s birthday, 10th June.
Artists and writers speaking at the service are David Suchet, Greta Scacchi, Sir Ronald Harwood, Simon Williams and Adrian Brown. Charlotte Page will sing a Puccini aria and Simon Green will sing ‘Avalon’, used by Rattigan in his 1939 play ‘After the Dance’.
Following the service, David Suchet will plant a Sorbus tree in Terence Rattigan’s memory, in the church garden. The service will be attended by Princess Galitzine, the former Dior model Jean Dawnay, who was Rattigan’s friend, hostess and muse as well as many other former friends and colleagues.
To apply to attend the service and the planting, please contact The Terence Rattigan Society at info@theterencerattigansociety.co.uk.
If you would like to become a member of the Society and attend other events and receive our newsletter, please contact:-
Diana Scotney
Tel: 01462 623941
