TERENCE RATTIGAN

Terence Rattigans sparkling comedy about a group of bright young things attempting to learn French on the Riviera amid myriad distractions, French Without Tears ran for over a thousand performances in the 1930s and remains a delight today.When a group of young men arrives at Professor Maingots French school for the summer to cram for the Diplomatic exam, they find their concentration disrupted by the beautiful Diana Lake. Quelle surprise, they have another new language to learn: girls.At first, it seems pretty simple. Kit loves Diana and she loves him. And Bill. Oh, and darling Alan, of course. Then theres Jack: shes in love too. Meanwhile, Babe conceals his feelings Perhaps its not so simple after all.French Without Tears was first performed in 1936. This edition was published in 2015 alongside a revival at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond.Also included is an authoritative introduction and biographical sketch by Dan Rebellato.

Two plays from one of the leading dramatists of the 20th century.In Who is Sylvia?, Mark is obsessed with a girl called Sylvia, whom he kissed just once at a garden party when he was 17. He makes a habit of pursuing physically identical girls for the rest of his life - despite having a wife and growing son.Terence Rattigans play Who is Sylvia? premiered in the West End in 1950, where it ran for over a year. He seems to be offering a bittersweet portayal of his father - and maybe of his own frustrated love life.Also included in this volume is Duologue, a short monologue play for a female actor in which a woman reminisces movingly about her dead husband.Originally written for television and appearing here for the first time in print, Duologue was broadcast in 1968 and subsequently staged in 1976 in a double bill with The Browning Version.

Terence Rattigans After the Dance is a brilliant attack on the hedonistic lifestyle of the bright young things of the 1920s and 30s.David is a high-living, hard-drinking, successful writer involved with two women: his wife Joan and an earnest-minded younger woman, Helen. When Joan commits suicide, David considers following her, but instead returns to a life of parties and drinking.After the Dance was first produced at the St Jamess Theatre, London, in June l939. It signalled a more serious direction in Rattigans writing after the relative frivolity of the hugely successful French Without Tears. It opened to euphoric reviews, but only a month later the European crisis was darkening the national mood and audiences began to dwindle. The play was pulled in August after only sixty performances.This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

Terence Rattigans first play, published for the first time in this edition to mark the centenary of his birth.Written with his fellow student, Philip Heimann, while they were both at Oxford, First Episode shows an infatuated undergraduate, Tony, falling for Margot, an actress ten years his senior. And vice versa. Completing a triangle of rival affections is Tonys best friend, David.Originally staged at a small experimental theatre in Kew in 1933, First Episode transferred to the West End and then to New York. Rattigan was twenty-two years old. Though not revived since then, it is a candidate with its cast of eight for rediscovery, much as was the now-feted After the Dance.This edition in the Nick Hern Books Rattigan Collection includes an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato.

Written in the early fifties when Rattigan was at the height of his powers, The Deep Blue Sea is a powerful account of lives blighted by love - or the lack of it.The play opens with the failed suicide of Hester Collyer (Peggy Ashcroft in the first production), who has deserted her husband for the raffish charms of an ex-fighter pilot.Terence Rattigans The Deep Blue Sea was first performed at the Duchess Theatre in the West End in March 1952.This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence RattiganMichael Billington

Two linked one-act plays set in a run-down residential hotel in Bournemouth.In the first of the plays, Table by the Window, a lonely divorcee tracks down her former husband in order to resume a kind of half-life with him. In the other, Table Number Seven, a repressed young spinster offers brave moral support to a fake major accused of importuning women in a local cinema.Terence Rattigans play Separate Tables was first produced at the St. Jamess Theatre, London, in September 1954.In an alternative version, only recently discovered among Rattigans papers, the majors offence was revealed to be homosexual; these alternative scenes are published here for the first time.This edition, edited and introduced by Dan Rebellato, includes a biographical sketch and chronology.Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan Michael Billington

Based on the true story of Alma Rattenbury, who, in 1935, went on trial with her eighteen-year-old lover for the murder of her husband. In the play, Terence Rattigan pits Alma against a formidable lady juror, whose own life offers a plangent counterpoint to the central tale of love, betrayal, guilt and obsession.Published in this edition alongside a major revival of the play at The Old Vic, London, Cause Celebre was Rattigans last play and was still running in the West End at the time of his death in 1977.It comes, like the other volumes in NHBs uniform edition of Rattigans plays, with an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato.Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan - Michael Billington

Rattigans well-loved play about an unpopular schoolmaster who snatches a last shred of dignity from the collapse of his career and his marriage. Twice filmed (with Michael Redgrave and Albert Finney) and frequently revived.Andrew Crocker-Harris wife Millie has become embittered and fatigued by her husbands lack of passion and ambition. On the verge of retirement, and divorce, Andrew is forced to come to terms with the platitude his life has become. Then John Taplow, a previously unnoticed pupil, gives Andrew an unexpected parting gift: a second-hand copy of Robert Brownings translation of Agamemnon a gift which offers not only a opportunity for redemption, but the chance to gain back some dignity.The Browning Version was premiered at the Phoenix Theatre, London, in September 1948.This volume also contains Harlequinade, a farce about a touring theatre troupe, written to accompany The Browning Version in a double-bill under the joint title, Playbill.Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence RattiganMichael BillingtonThis edition includes an authoritative introduction and biographical sketch by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato, along with a chronology of his plays.

Love in Idleness is the third in Terence Rattigans unofficial trilogy of war plays (after Flare Path and While the Sun Shines). It is published here alongside an earlier version of the play, Less Than Kind, which was never staged during Rattigans lifetime.Michael, eighteen, returns to wartime London from schooling in Canada, brimming with youthful left-wing convictions. Reunited with his mother, he is alarmed as he begins to realise that she is the mistress of a leading member of the war cabinet. Sparks fly between the idealistic younger man and the pragmatic politician, while the mother is torn between them...Love in Idleness was first staged at the Lyric Theatre, London, in December 1944, in a version rewritten by Rattigan at the request of the productions stars, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.The earlier version of the play, Less Than Kind, was never staged and remained unpublished until 2011, the centenary of Rattigans birth. That version was premiered at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in January 2011.This volume presents both plays in full so that readers may judge for themselves which is the better.This edition includes an authoritative introduction by Dan Rebellato, a biographical sketch and chronology.

A double bill by Terence Rattigan, featuring two plays of striking contrast that display his astonishing range as a writer.The comic gem Harlequinade follows a classical theatre company whose intrigues and dalliances are revealed with increasingly calamitous consequences in an affectionate celebration of the lunatic art of putting on a play. A powerfully atmospheric one-woman play, All On Her Own tells the story of Rosemary who, alone at midnight in London, has a secret burden to share that is both heartbreaking and sinister.Harlequinade & All On Her Own was performed as part of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Companys Plays at the Garrick Season in 2015, starring Zoe Wanamaker and Kenneth Branagh, and co-directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford. This official tie-in edition features both plays, plus exclusive additional content including an introduction to Rattigans work, interviews with Kenneth Branagh, Rob Ashford, Zoe Wanamaker and designer Christopher Oram, and reproductions of Orams original design sketches.

Based on the real-life court case of a young naval cadet unjustly accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and first staged in 1946, The Winslow Boy has been revived many times since.Ronnie Winslow is expelled from naval college, having been accused of petty theft. Enraged, his father Arthur engages a lawyer to challenge the Admiralty to prove the charges in court but public opinion is very much against the Winslows, and each member of the family is suffering...Terence Rattigans play The Winslow Boy was first produced (after a brief pre-London tour) at the Lyric Theatre, London, in May 1946.This edition includes an authoritative introduction by Dan Rebellato, a biographical sketch and a chronology.

A moving story of love and loyalty, courage and fear, based on Terence Rattigans own experiences as a tail gunner in the Second World War.1942. The Falcon Hotel, on the Lincolnshire coast. RAF bomber pilot Teddy is celebrating a reunion with his actress wife Patricia. When Peter, Patricias ex-lover and Hollywood heart-throb, arrives and an urgent bombing mission over Germany is ordered, Patricia finds herself at the centre of an emotional conflict as unpredictable as the war in the skies.Terence Rattigans play Flare Path was first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, in August 1942. It was revived as part of the Rattigan Centenary celebrations at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in March 2011.This edition contains an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato.

Terence Rattigans epic and probing drama about the man immortalised as Lawrence of Arabia.Arrogant, flippant, withdrawn and with a talent for self-concealment, the mysterious Aircraftman Ross seems an odd recruit for the Royal Air Force. In fact the truth is even stranger than the man himself.Behind the false name is an enigma, a man named Lawrence who started as a civilian in the Map Office in 1914 and went on to mastermind some of the most audacious military victories in the history of the British Army. These victories earned him an enduring and romantic nom de guerre: Lawrence of Arabia.Rattigans 1960 play reveals the unusual and deeply conflicted Englishman behind the heroic legend. This edition, with an Introduction by Dan Rebellato, was published alongside the revival at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2016, directed by Adrian Noble and starring Joseph Fiennes as Ross.

In finance, man makes his own miracles. Jazz, Broadway and the Great Depression. In 1930s New York City, international financier Gregor Antonescus luck has finally run out. As news of a catastrophic business deal ripples across the world, he flees to the apartment of his estranged son Basil.There, Gregor will need all of his ruthlessness and ingenuity to save his reputation and keep his empire from collapse. But will he risk using his only son as a pawn in one last power play? A sharp and gripping tale of paternity and corruption, Terence Rattigans play Man and Boy was first performed in London in 1963. This edition was published alongside a revival at the National Theatre, London, in 2026. It features the original version of Rattigans play, with an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato and an afterword by Anthony Lau, director of the revival.