Mainly Opera and Ballet
Terence Rattigan’s excellent short play The Browning Version is set in a boys’ boarding school, and for the first half of the evening a new play by David Hare, commissioned the Rattigan estate, has a similar setting. The Browning Version is about one of the masters, and Hare’s counterpoint focusses on one of the boys. In both plays …
A shilling in the meter, for those of us who remember, was essential to keep the gas and electricity going. Awfully annoying when the money runs out unexpectedly, but in this case it saves Hester’s life. She took sleeping pills and put on the gas deliberately. As Mrs. Page she complains about being a ‘golf …
This is not just a play for ballet fans or anyone who has heard of Diaghilev or Nijinsky, it’s also for Rattigan fans, as Terence Rattigan himself appears on stage, brilliantly played by Malcolm Sinclair. He interacts with the characters in his own drama, particularly Diaghilev, and at the end of Part I we hear the …
Anne-Marie Duff as Alma Rattenbury was utterly convincing as a charmingly batty woman who lived life to the full.
“Don’t worry, skipper will get us home again . . . and you have to pretend you’re not afraid”, so speaks the tail gunner, a role that Terence Rattigan himself played for real in World War II.
This play is a must-see for any Rattigan fans, or indeed for anyone else, but this delightful theatre is small and tickets scarce.
This riveting play by Terence Rattigan had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before war was declared, and when the country’s mood rapidly changed it was taken off. … It’s been somewhat ignored for that reason, but this production and cast do it full justice, and I recommend booking tickets before word gets out.
This production by Peter Hall of Terence Rattigan’s play about a classics master at boarding school, was beautifully performed.
This was a terrific performance of Terence Rattigan’s excellent play about a teenage boy wrongly accused of stealing at Naval College.
