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Separate Tables is the collective name of two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, both taking place in the Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. The first play, titled Table by the Window, focuses on the troubled relationship between a disgraced Labour politician and his ex-wife. The second play, Table Number Seven, is set about 18 months after the events of the previous play, and deals with the touching friendship between a repressed spinster and Major Pollock, a kindly but bogus man posing as an upper-class retired army officer. The two main roles in both plays are written to be played by the same performers. The secondary characters – permanent residents, the hotel's manager, and members of the staff – appear in both plays. The plays are about people who are driven by loneliness into a state of desperation.
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan was a British dramatist. He was one of England's most popular mid 20th century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.
The Browning Version is a play by Terence Rattigan, seen by many as his best work, and first performed on 8 September 1948 at the Phoenix Theatre, London. It was originally one of two short plays, jointly titled "Playbill"; the companion piece being Harlequinade, which forms the second half of the evening. The Browning Version is set in a boys' public school and the Classics teacher in the play, Crocker-Harris, is believed to have been based on Rattigan's Classics tutor at Harrow School, J.W. Coke Norris (1874–1961).
The Deep Blue Sea is a British stage play by Terence Rattigan from 1952. Rattigan based his story and characters in part on his secret relationship with Kenny Morgan, and the aftermath of the end of their relationship. The play was first performed in London on 6 March 1952, directed by Frith Banbury, and won praise for actress Peggy Ashcroft, who co-starred with Kenneth More. In the US, the Plymouth Theater staged the play in October 1952, with Margaret Sullavan. The play with Sullavan subsequently transferred to Broadway, with its Broadway premiere on 5 November 1953, and running for 132 performances.
The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 986 seats on three levels.
Anthony Asquith was a leading English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), among other adaptations. His other notable films include Pygmalion (1938), French Without Tears (1940), The Way to the Stars (1945) and a 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Man and Boy is a play by Terence Rattigan. It was first performed at The Queen's Theatre, London, and Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York, in 1963, with Charles Boyer starring as Gregor Antonescu. It was poorly received, with a limited London run and only 54 performances on Broadway; but was revived by Maria Aitken in 2005 at the Duchess Theatre, London, with David Suchet as Gregor Antonescu, to great acclaim. Maria Aitken again directed the play for Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway in the fall of 2011 at the American Airlines Theatre starring Tony Award winner Frank Langella as Antonescu.
The Sleeping Prince: An Occasional Fairy Tale is a 1953 play by Terence Rattigan, conceived to coincide with the coronation of Elizabeth II in the same year. Set in London in 1911, it tells the story of Mary Morgan, a young actress, who meets and ultimately captivates Prince Charles of Carpathia, considered to be inspired by Carol II of Romania.
The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located in Charing Cross Road. The entrances are on Phoenix Street and Charing Cross Road. The Phoenix Theatre was built on the site of a former factory and then music hall Alcazar before.
A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 novel by Charles Dickens.
DuPont Show of the Month was a 90-minute television anthology series that aired monthly on CBS from 1957 to 1961. The DuPont Company also sponsored a weekly half-hour anthology drama series hosted by June Allyson, The DuPont Show with June Allyson (1959–61).
Salisbury Playhouse is a theatre in the English city of Salisbury, Wiltshire. It was built in 1976 and comprises the 517-seat Main House and the 149-seat Salberg, a rehearsal room and a community & education space.
Alvin Rakoff is a Canadian television, stage, and film director who has spent the bulk of his career in England and directed more than 100 television plays, as well as a dozen feature films and numerous stage productions. Among other awards, he is twice winner of the International Emmy Award, for A Voyage Round My Father, starring Laurence Olivier, and Call Me Daddy, starring Donald Pleasence.
Sean O'Connor is a British producer, writer and director working in theatre, film, television and radio. He was the editor of the long-running BBC radio drama, The Archers from 2013-16. He replaced Dominic Treadwell-Collins as the executive producer of EastEnders in June 2016. It was revealed in June 2017 that O'Connor had left EastEnders to focus on his career in feature films.
Marianne Phoebe Elliott, OBE is a British theatre director.
Hazel Terry was an English actress. A member of the theatrical dynasty the Terry family she had a successful stage career, and also made some cinema films. Among her roles was Ophelia in Hamlet opposite her cousin John Gielgud.
Cause Célèbre or A Woman of Principle is a 1975 radio play, and the final play by the English author Terence Rattigan. It was inspired by the trial of Alma Rattenbury and her teenage lover in 1935 for the murder of her third husband Francis Rattenbury and first broadcast by the BBC on 27 October 1975. Alma was played by Diana Dors. Rattigan was then commissioned to rewrite it into a stage play ready to be produced in Autumn 1976, but his terminal cancer and casting problems meant he was only able to start work in January 1977, alongside director Robin Midgley. This stage version premiered at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester in 1977 before its West End premiere on 4 July 1977 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, with Glynis Johns as Alma Rattenbury and Helen Lindsay as Edith Davenport. It received largely positive reviews. Rattigan checked himself out of hospital to attend the opening night.
Performance is a UK television anthology series produced by Simon Curtis for the BBC. Twenty-six episodes aired on the BBC from 1991–98, almost all of which were productions of classic and contemporary plays, including Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen, Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, King Lear by William Shakespeare, and The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan.
Who Is Sylvia? is a 1950 comedy play by the British writer Terence Rattigan about a man obsessed with the image of a woman he met as a seventeen year old and his search for her throughout the rest of his life. The play offered a thinly veiled portrayal of Rattigan's own philandering father. Like Perchance to Dream, Ivor Novello's long-running musical terminating only two years previously, Rattigan chose a line from William Shakespeare for his title. The line is the first wistful question of a song passage in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Variation on a Theme is a 1958 play by the British writer Terence Rattigan. It is a reworking of Alexandre Dumas, fils's nineteenth century novel and subsequent play La Dame aux Camélias.
