Terence Rattigan – författare

"Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan" (Guardian) Constantly revived on stage, radio and television, Rattigan's plays demonstrate their continuing power to hold and move audiences. This volume contains his best work from the thirties and forties, including his first play French Without Tears, about a group of "bright young things" attempting to learn French on the Riviera amid numerous distractions. The second play The Winslow Boy, based on an actual case, is the powerful, deliberately well-made drama of a father's attempts to clear his cadet son's name against the assembled might of Britain's naval establishment - the Admiralty. Completing the volume are two one-act plays Harlequinade, a sustained joke against some well-worn theatrical conventions and The Browning Version which portrays a disliked classics master, Crocker-Harris on the point of retiring after eighteen years of unsuccessful teaching "well up there among the dozen greatest plays written in this country this century." (The Spectator) "Terence Rattigan is the English Tennessee Williams.He maps out the same fatal divorce between the spiritual and the physical, the same drama of lost souls and misdirected lusts, of people stranded with their frustrations, blasted by guilt and reaching out for rescue that they know full well will fail" (Sunday Times)

"Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan" (Guardian) This selection from the best of Rattigan's work from the '50s onwards includes two of his most popular plays, The Deep Blue Sea which movingly depicts the closing stages of a hopeless, adulterous, socially inequitable love affair between an RAF war hero and a judge's wife; Separate Tables, printed in its original version for the first time, comprises two one-act plays both set in a private hotel in Bournemouth but with a different pair of principal characters - in one a disgraced politician and his estranged wife, in the other, a bogus major and young woman dominated by her mother "This gay version hardly departs from the original, yet converts a conventional West End drama into a forceful attack upon 1950s witch-hunts and stigmatising of homosexuals...how luminously Rattigan evokes the sexually intolerant and phobic attitudes of fifties middle England" (Evening Standard); the volume closes with In Praise of Love, in which a woman and her husband persist in gallantly deceiving one another each pretending to be unaware that she is fatally ill.

Gregor Antonescu, a tycoon of Hungarian origin, arrives at the Greenwich Village apartment of his illegitimate son, Basil, for a business meeting to discuss a highly-profitable merger. After achieving apparent success, he finds everything collapsing around him and learns from Basil that a warrant is out for his arrest. Basil offers help, but Gregor acquires a conscience for the first time in his life and determines his own way out. A revival of this tense, psychological drama was seen to critical acclaim at the Duchess Theatre, London, in 2005, starring David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu.

One of the darkest and most romantic of Dickens' novels, A Tale of Two Cities was adapted for the stage by the dream team of Terence Rattigan and John Gielgud in 1935, but a planned West End production was never staged. It finally received its professional world premiere at the King's Head Theatre in September 2013. In a time when governments all over the world are facing down political unrest and fierce protests, this revolutionary story has never been more relevant. The adaptation, edited by King's Head artistic director Adam Spreadbury-Maher, marries three of the finest artists in their own fields that England has ever known: Dickens the master story-teller, Rattigan the great playwright and Gielgud the mercurial actor. Gielgud intended to play both Sydney Carton and a number of other roles, and this adaptation reflects that ambition by having thirty characters played by just eight actors.

'In finance, man makes his own miracles.' Jazz, Broadway and the Great Depression. In 1930s New York City, international financier Gregor Antonescu's 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 Rattigan's 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 Rattigan's final version of the play, with an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato and an afterword by Anthony Lau, director of the revival.

Terence Rattigan's 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 Tony's 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.

Love in Idleness is the third in Terence Rattigan's 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 Rattigan's 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 production's 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 Rattigan's 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.

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 Rattigan's 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.

A moving story of love and loyalty, courage and fear, based on Terence Rattigan's 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, Patricia's 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 Rattigan's 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.