Rattigan Collection – serie

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stars, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.The earlier version of the play, Less Than Kind, was never staged and remained unpublished until 2011, the centenary of Rattigan's birth.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.

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 Célèbre was Rattigan's 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 NHB's uniform edition of Rattigan's 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

A masterpiece of light comedy from Terence Rattigan, about a group of bright young things attempting to learn French on the Riviera amid myriad distractions.French Without Tears is the play that first made Rattigan's name, and ran for over a thousand performances in the 1930s.This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

Terence Rattigan’s 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 James’s Theatre, London, in June l939. It signalled a more serious direction in Rattigan's 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.

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 Rattigan's 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 Rattigan' Michael 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 Rattigan's play Separate Tables was first produced at the St. James's Theatre, London, in September 1954.In an alternative version, only recently discovered among Rattigan's papers, the major's 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

An almost unbearably moving story of veiled emotions running deep, Terence Rattigan's In Praise of Love is based on the true life situation of Rex Harrison's wife, Kay Kendall, and her early death from cancer.Lydia is shielding her husband, Sebastian, from the knowledge that she is dying from leukaemia. But Sebastian does know and is seeking to spare her. She dies without either of them openly acknowledging their true feelings...The play was first produced as a one-act play under the title After Lydia in a double-bill with the short farce, Before Dawn, at the Duchess Theatre, London, in September 1973. Rattigan reworked and extended the play as In Praise of Love for its New York premiere at the Morosco Theatre in December 1974, starring Rex Harrison himself.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 Rattigan' Michael Billington