The Winslow Boy: a play that lasts - Telegraph Theatre Features The Winslow Boy: a play that lasts The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan may be old fashioned but is a play that stands the test of time while more modern efforts falter says Sarah Crompton The Winslow Boy: Charlie Rowe as Ronnie and Henry Goodman as Arthur in the Old Vic production Photo: Alastair Muir Follow The Winslow Boy opens at the Old Vic tonight. Even without having seen the production, which stars Henry Goodman, I know I shall love it. In fact, I’ve never seen a production of The Winslow Boy that I didn’t love; and I have seen some very bad ones indeed. Terence Rattigan wrote The Winslow Boy in 1946 in the great heyday of a career which went on to include The Browning Version, and The Deep Blue Sea. It is based on a true story, from an earlier era, of a cadet expelled from naval college after he is accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order. His father’s belief in his innocence and determination to clear his son’s name are the subject of the play. The Winslow Boy is a work of indestructible genius.

On paper it is gripping; on stage it can take the breath away. It is full of great scenes of high emotion but its power lies in the small domestic details, lightly sketched, of a family torn apart by their own principled stand. Famously, the play is clever enough to let its climax - the court case in which the Admiralty withdraws its action - take place off-stage. We wait, with the family, for news. Its effects seem natural yet it is highly-wrought and beautifully written. It is so good, in fact, that it was the play that most easily survived the dip in Rattigan’s reputation that occurred when a new generation of angry young men branded his form of well-made play “old fashioned”. The critic Kenneth Tynan famously wrote of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, the 1956 play that supposedly swept Rattigan and the “drawing room” playwrights like him to one side: “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger.” Well, that’s exactly how I feel about The Winslow Boy.

And here’s the thing: over the years, Rattigan’s play has worn rather better than Osborne’s baggy cry of post-war rage with its truculent anti-hero, his put-upon wife, and their silly games of “bears and squirrels.” Related Articles I've Just Seen David Bowie's V&A exhibition 21 Mar 2013 Some plays wear much better than others. I recently went to see Quartermaine’s Terms, starring Rowan Atkinson, at Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End. It is given a beautifully weighted production by Richard Eyre, full of well-observed performances. Atkinson himself, as the fading, socially-inept, almost catatonic, lonely man at its heart is superb. The playwright Simon Gray’s basic point about the way in which people overlook each other’s needs and project their own feelings onto the lost and isolated is both wise and timeless. Yet the play itself seems curiously dated; we are so far removed from its world of low-cost schools of English where staff incompetence can be long tolerated, that it rings untrue. When Rattigan wrote about The Winslow Boy he was already looking back to the past for his inspiration.

He recognised that in the dusty pages of an Edwardian court case (whose real life protagonist George Archer-Shee died, in the bitterest of all ironies, at the age of 19 in the carnage of Ypres) there was a story about values and love that would endure. It is this desire to talk of the universal through the specific that has helped Rattigan outstay his one-time usurpers. Osborne is difficult to revive precisely because his voice of dissident protest sprang so strongly from his rejection of the theatre that had gone before. He wanted to drag its well-made sonorities, its three-act gracefulness into the modern mire and shake them up a little. Unlike Pinter or Beckett, who aspired to the poetic and the evocative, he took realism as his model. He is always well worth watching and sometimes – particularly in The Entertainer - he finds the kind of resonance that speaks down the years. Yet he is hard to like, and harder to love. His importance in theatre means you should always wish to see the plays of Osborne. You should wish to see those of Gray too, full as they are of wit and compassion.

But for my money, Rattigan is the one to love - and the one who, whatever the time in which the action is set, can speak for everyone. Read more columns by Sarah Crompton here The Winslow Boy (1999) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Early 20th century England: while toasting his daughter Catherine's engagement, Arthur Winslow learns the royal naval academy expelled his 14-year-old son, Ronnie, for stealing five ...

See full summary » Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 29 titles created 24 Feb 2012 a list of 32 titles created 17 Apr 2014 a list of 42 titles created 23 May 2014 a list of 38 titles created 24 Feb 2015 a list of 25 titles created 2 months ago Title: The Winslow Boy (1999) 7.4/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 5 wins & 4 nominations. See more awards » Videos Shoe-shiner Gino is hired to take the rap for a mafia murder. Two-bit gangster Jerry watches over Gino and gives him a weekend to remember. Director: David Mamet Student Carol visits Professor John to discuss how she failed his course but the discussion takes awkward turn. Director: David Mamet A Jewish homicide detective investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result.

Director: David Mamet An employee of a corporation with a lucrative secret process is tempted to betray it. But there's more to it than that. Director: David Mamet In pre-WW1 England, a youngster is expelled from a naval academy over a petty theft, but his parents raise a political furor by demanding a trial. Director: Anthony Asquith A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz. Director: David Mamet The investigation into a kidnapping of the daughter of a high-ranking US government official. Director: David Mamet A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men. Director: David Mamet A career jewel thief finds himself at tense odds with his longtime partner, a crime boss who sends his nephew to keep watch. Director: David Mamet A fateful event leads to a job in the film business for top mixed-martial arts instructor Mike Terry. Though he refuses to participate in prize bouts, circumstances conspire to force him to consider entering such a competition.

Director: David Mamet Film adaptation of David Mamet's comic play Lakeboat about a grad student who takes a summer job on a Great Lakes freighter and sees life through the eyes of his low-brow crew members. Director: Joe Mantegna Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful Government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed.... See full summary » Director: Oliver Parker Edit Storyline Early 20th century England: while toasting his daughter Catherine's engagement, Arthur Winslow learns the royal naval academy expelled his 14-year-old son, Ronnie, for stealing five shillings. Father asks son if it is true; when the lad denies it, Arthur risks fortune, health, domestic peace, and Catherine's prospects to pursue justice. After defeat in the military court of appeals, Arthur and Catherine go to Sir Robert Morton, a brilliant, cool barrister and M.P., who examines Ronnie and suggests that they take the matter before Parliament to seek permission to sue the Crown. They do, which keeps Ronnie's story on the front page and keeps Catherine in Sir Robert's ken.

Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com> 29 October 1999 (UK) See more » Also Known As: El honor de los Winslow See more » Filming Locations: $80,553 (USA) (30 April 1999) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia Neil North , who played the First Lord of the Admiralty in the 1999 version of The Winslow Boy, played Ronnie Winslow in the 1948 version. See more » Goofs At the beginning of the movie When Ronnie Winslow tears open the envelope and is about to remove the letter, the stamp and address are facing him, then in the reverse shot as he removes the letter the stamp and address are facing away from him. See more » Quotes (Ft. Myers, FL) – See all my reviews In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit right off that I have never read the Terence Rattigan play from which this film is derived. Therefore, my evaluation of it purely concerns the film itself. I saw the movie during its brief stint in American theaters, and I was very surprised.

It is the sort of film that I was amazed made it into Anerican movie theaters at all. It is neither fast-moving nor action-packed, and it contains no sexual content or violence. It centers around a functional British family and has very little romance. It does, however, address many issues and has a great deal of sophisticated humor. Rebecca Pidgeon's performance was particularly memorable. She had the perfect combination of restraint and sarcasm. I have heard complaints about her-that she was too stiff and lackluster, but I found her character very believable. Perhaps this is because I come from a close, sarcastic family myself. The Winslows came off as very attached to each other, but their Britishness prevented them from being mushy. I would definitely not recommend this movie to everyone. It is a very specific type of film and probably would be enjoyed by someone who is a fan of slow-paced, dialogue-driven period pieces or by someone who is a bibliophile. It is an unusual film, but I personally think it is pure gold. 45 of 48 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes ‘The Winslow Boy’ Is Revived at American Airlines Theater - The New York Times The New York Times Theater Reviews |Father May Not Know Best Search Father May Not Know Best ‘The Winslow Boy’ Is Revived at American Airlines Theater The Winslow Boy Closing Date: December 1, 2013 American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300 Continue reading the main story Photo The Winslow Boy Charlotte Parry and Roger Rees in this revival, at the American Airlines Theater. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Much patience is demanded from the family of Arthur Winslow, the British patriarch waging a long battle to see that justice is properly served in “The Winslow Boy,” the 1946 play by Terence Rattigan that is being splendidly revived by the Roundabout Theater Company at the American Airlines Theater. Maybe I should add that a little patience may be required of audiences, too.

Rattigan was one of the most successful British playwrights of the middle years of the last century, and wrote firmly in the tradition of the “well-made” play, drama that moves cleverly and deliberately, but with no great haste, through its unruffling paces. During the sometimes languid first act of “The Winslow Boy,” I occasionally found myself wondering whether we really needed to hear so much about a character’s crack cricketing (Rattigan was an avid fan), or, indeed, whether the kernel of the plot — the question of whether a 13-year-old boy stole a “postal order” (whatever that is!) of “five shillings” (whatever that is!) — was really substantial enough to merit such expansive dramatization. Video Excerpt: 'The Winslow Boy' Roger Rees and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in a scene from the Roundabout Theater's revival of Terence Rattigan's 1946 drama. By Roundabout Theater Company on Publish Date October 17, 2013. .

Watch in Times Video » embed But while it would give away the game to divulge whether the Winslow family’s patience is finally rewarded, I can firmly state that the audience’s ultimately is. Rattigan was rightly lauded (if sometimes derided) for the elegance of his plays’ construction and the delicacy with which he handled questions of how men and women struggle with the sometimes conflicting demands of passion and reason. As the emotional stakes of Arthur’s campaign are gradually revealed, “The Winslow Boy” opens out to become both a stirring drama about the rights of the individual in conflict with the imperatives of the government (a topic that could hardly seem more pertinent, in the post- Edward J. Snowden era), and a moving, surprisingly ambiguous tale of the price to be paid for the relentless pursuit of even an honorable goal. The veteran actor Roger Rees gives an impeccably judged performance in the central role of Arthur, a man who appears to wear his ethical rectitude lightly, until it is challenged when his son is expelled from the naval academy where he has been studying.

Little Ronnie Winslow (Spencer Davis Milford) insists, even through terrified tears, that he did not steal the fatal five-shilling postal order (let’s just say it’s a cashier’s check for a small sum), and Arthur’s instinctive trust in his son inspires him to question the expulsion, although the school insists that there is ample proof of the boy’s guilt. (The play was inspired by an actual case.) Continue reading the main story Arthur’s initial challenge is met with defiance by the authorities, but he refuses to give up, and enlists the eminent barrister Sir Robert Morton (Alessandro Nivola) to take up the cause. The climactic scene of the first act finds this stern and supercilious figure interrogating the quaking young Ronnie in the family drawing room, as his family looks on with dismay. The curtain falls on a classic Rattigan moment, perhaps slightly predictable but highly satisfying. Photo From left, Spencer Davis Milford, Zachary Booth, Alessandro Nivola, Roger Rees, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Charlotte Parry in “The Winslow Boy,” directed by Lindsay Posner.

Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times The British director Lindsay Posner, who staged a well-regarded revival of the play at the Old Vic in London this spring, has expertly cast this version, too, employing mostly American actors, alongside a few Britons — often a tricky business when staging echt-English 20th-century dramas set in tastefully appointed drawing rooms. (Credit for the tasteful appointments, in both set and costuming, go to the British designer Peter McKintosh.) Advertisement Continue reading the main story At first, I was a little wary of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in the role of Arthur’s gentle wife, Grace; in the opening scenes, she seems to be deploying her genteel accent as if carrying a delicate piece of crystal around on a silver tray. But she brings an understated warmth to her performance, a slightly brittle smile betraying the anxiety Grace comes to feel as Arthur’s recalcitrance begins to take a financial and emotional toll on the family. The boyishly handsome Mr. Nivola, too, might seem unusual casting for a wig-wearing British barrister, but he slips into the skin of this cool character with seemingly little effort.

Sir Robert is the type of whom it is said that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth; Mr. Nivola invests him with such a potent blend of froideur and hauteur that you imagine that butter wouldn’t melt anywhere within a 10-foot radius of him. Photo Charlotte Parry and Zachary Booth in "The Winslow Boy." Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Until, that is, he finds himself warming to Ronnie’s older sister, Catherine (Charlotte Parry), whose engagement to a dashing young army officer (the fine Chandler Williams) is imperiled when the Winslow case becomes a national cause célèbre; not the done thing to have a hint of scandal in the family, after all. The British Ms. Parry is terrific in transmitting Catherine’s fortitude, which she shares with her father, as well as her sorrowful sense that, although the cause may be just, the burden it has put on the family may not be worth it. (Only Zachary Booth, as Ronnie’s happy-go-lucky elder brother, slides a little too far into the “tennis, anyone?” territory of upper-middle-class British stereotype.) Anchoring the production is Mr.

Rees’s perfectly modulated performance as Arthur, on whom the anxiety and notoriety surrounding the case take the most physical toll. When the play begins, he is obviously a man whose physical prowess is on the wane, even if his mind remains sharp, but as the months and years pass, he grows stooped and infirm. Mr. Rees movingly intimates that, underneath his confident exterior, Arthur has also become prey to thoughts of how heedlessly, and perhaps permanently, he has endangered his family’s fortunes: his eyes glitter with disturbed imaginings. Rattigan’s drama grows more nuanced and contemplative as it proceeds, becoming something richer than a David-and-Goliath tale about the nobility of fighting for justice. (“Let right be done” is the ringing motto of Sir Robert in the courtroom.) Certainly there are moments when Rattigan’s dramaturgy feels slightly fusty: a sentiment-scented passage in which Arthur receives a letter inspiring him, impulsively and temporarily, to withdraw his suit, for instance.

But the play’s concluding scene, which brings the denouement of the court case from an entirely unexpected witness (the family, so intensely involved, manages to miss the climactic moment), is a model of understatement and quiet surprise. The manner in which Rattigan embodies resonant themes in characters who never give showy, dramatic speeches, or even let on that their hearts are bleeding and their minds are clouded with doubt, touches a deep chord.

The Winslow Boy The Winslow Boy THE WINSLOW BOY Fcourt Lawrence Russell The Winslow Boy (1999) writ & dir David Mamet (adapted from the 1946 play by Terence Rattigan) cine Benoit Delhomme star Nigel Hawthorne (Arthur Winslow) Rebecca Pidgeon (Kate Winslow) Adam Gillet (John Watherstone) Jeremy Northam (Sir Robert Morton) Guy Edwards (Ronnie Winslow) Gemma Jones (Ronnie's mother), Mathew Pidgeon (Ronnie's older brother), Colin Stinton (Desmond Curry) remake of 1948 version dir Anthony Asquith star Robert Donat, Margaret Leighton and Cedric Hardwicke The Winslow Boy ...the sexual dialogue on which civilization is founded Mamet makes an impressive recovery from the near-fiasco of his previous film (The Spanish Prisoner, that stilted psychological reprise of his first film masterpiece, House of Games ). Strangely, this conservative anti-drama by the very English playwright Terence Rattigan is the perfect artistic shell for Mamet, who is raw American pleb by comparison.

Some might question this apparent collision of culture, yet Mamet and Rattigan aren't as dissimilar as their language suggests. Both are writers of manners, a trait typical of live theatre. The Winslow Boy is set in Edwardian England, features characters who are models of self-restraint, their pedigreed dialogue the watermark of Anglo civilization. Rattigan wrote about the bourgeois for the bourgeois... which is the main business of art in a democratic state. Typically his characters are tight, anal, silent running. Well-groomed and ritualized, their language is used to conceal emotion rather than to express it. Mamet is also an exponent of the mannered exchange -- some say "stilted" -- that has its origins in the live theatre rather than in his natural American environment. The rhetorical scatology of the salesmen in Glengarry Glenross is a thing of beauty, where emotion is fused into a searing free-market poetry. His characters are all emotion, typical of a modern culture where self comes first, and diplomacy is almost irrelevant.

A Mamet world is a long way from Edwardian discipline with its concealed sexuality, walled gardens, Winslow Homer nautical paintings, Oliver Cromwell busts, and suffragette politics.... 'The curtain rises to disclose' Arthur Winslow's (Nigel Hawthorne) South Kensington house is as secure as a well-crafted ship -- the panelled walls, the drawers, desks and cabinets etc gleam with the varnished burls of exotic woods, a place where a retired naval officer would be every much at home as is this senior banker and his family. His son Dickie (Mathew Pidgeon) is cheerfully failing at Oxford, yet quite prepared to follow his father's lead and step down into banking. His daughter Kate (Rebecca Pidgeon) is the real competent, an earnest young woman who embraces the trendy Fabian egalitarianism of the moment and a hulking officer of the Horse Guards. The baby of the family is Ronnie.... Cut To: a twelve year old boy standing stiffly in the verdant garden, despite the steady rain.

He is wearing a navel cadet's uniform and clutching a letter containing his expulsion from the Academy on the grounds that he stole and cashed a fellow student's 5 shilling postal order. This is Ronnie Winslow, another boy victim reminiscent of those so magnificently established in the novels of Charles Dickens. Ronnie (Guy Edwards) is the real crisis on which the action of the drama revolves... his father, convinced of his innocence, sets about clearing the Winslow name. In order to take on the sealed, autocratic institution of the Admiralty, he enlists the services of Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), the best advocate that money can buy. Needless to say this champion is another familiar male figure from the annals of English lit, a self-assured aristocratic beast not unlike Lord Byron. Byron said that "all good prose resolves itself as blank verse" and certainly the smooth syllogisms of forensic Sir Robert are as close to poetry as naturalism will allow. While his arguments in the House of Lords are one thing, his elliptic exchanges with the subtle beauty Kate are another. Naturally they circle one another like animals dressed for Spring.

With her suffragette ideology and (we can assume) protestant ethic, she is very suspicious of the pandecting Sir Robert. There is no coarse groping in this sedate argument for justice. After thanking Sir Robert for his triumphal work at the garden gate, Kate says (in reply to his chiding about her suffragette work), "How little you know about women... well, goodbye. I expect we'll never see each other again." Sir Robert touches his black Regency hat (the kind that only pallbearers in small towns and bad movies continue to wear), says, "And how little you know about men...." Typically, socialism is dressed as a female, with conservatism as the male brute about to be had. Justice is the sexual dialogue on which civilization is founded. Kate's Horse Guard lover -- aligned as he must be with the military establishment -- is discarded by his own design... (and Rattigan's) as he must side with the military establishment that pays his salary. The narrative symmetries are perfect and French, like the models the young Rattigan emulated as a student at Harrow. It's a superb directorial interpretation by David Mamet.

He overcomes the play's natural stage inclination to wordy discourse and stasis by moving the characters smoothly and naturally within the Winslow house as if they are dancing with the camera. The blocking is seamless. The entire opening scene flows with such a natural harmony you feel that you are a guest in the house, there for lunch perhaps. The art direction is likewise superb, the brown and yellow tonalities lifted from the scenes of the leading portrait painter of the period, the American ex-patriate John Singer Sargent. It's always good to see cinematography that is more than mere documentary effect. 'Films themselves that veer away from whatever residual taint of drama they may have had, and become celebrations of our mercantile essense, become, in effect, pure advertisement' (David Mamet) Rattigan based his play on the 1910 trial of George Archer-Shee. Beyond his appreciation for the elegance of this play, you have to wonder what drew Mamet to it. Could it be its politics? A Winslow ancestor was one of the pilgrims on the Mayflower, and the first governor of the Colony. There's something about the dogged determination of Arthur Winslow that's very American.

And Kate Winslow? We've seen her around recently, haven't we.... LR 3/2000 The Winslow Boy The Winslow Boy The Winslow Boy Terence Rattigan spent much of World War Two working in the RAF Film Unit, producing a series of semi-propaganda scripts, like The Day Will Dawn, Uncensored and The Way to the Stars. It was his producer from the film unit, Anatole de Grunwald, who suggested to him shortly before the end of the war that he might get together a separate proposal for a film looking at British justice. The idea appealed to Rattigan, whose hobbies included collecting books on famous trials; he and the film director Anthony Asquith used to play a party game where they staged mock trials around fictional crimes. Rattigan wanted to write a screenplay arising out of the celebrated trial in 1910 of George Archer-Shee, a case which 'had so fascinated and moved me that unlike many ideas that will peacefully wait in the store-room of the mind until their time for emergence has come, it demanded instant expression'. But Grunwald, of the opinion that the episode was rather dull, rejected it.

And when Rattigan peevishly announced that he would write it as a play instead, Asquith insisted that it would be too expensive, requiring court and domestic scenes and a huge cast of extras. Spurred by the scepticism of his two friends, Rattigan set to work. As befitting his subject, Rattigan decided to write the play in the sturdy form of the four-act 'well-made play', which had become the staple of the late Victorian and Edwardian theatre. This has led one critic to describe The Winslow Boy as 'a deliberate, self-conscious piece of revivalism', and in a way it is; but the adoption of this form has theatrical advantages, and Rattigan would no doubt have argued, like Ronnie Winslow, that copying someone else's writing is, in itself, also writing. For, while providing a series of technical devices to introduce the legal story, this model also gives Rattigan a formal language with which to conjure up a family living on the other side of two world wars.

Avoiding the rather looser vernacular of his other plays, Rattigan gives several figures a verbal stiffness which captures the Edwardian Winslows by echoing the decorous style of Granville Barker or Galsworthy: Sir Robert It is interesting to note that the exact words he uses on such occasions are: Let Right be done. Arthur Let Right be done? I like that phrase, sir. Sir Robert It has a certain ring about it – has it not? (Languidly.) Let Right be done. (p. 47) The final act of The Winslow Boy recalls the first act of Pinero's Benefit of the Doubt (1895), in which a woman waits with her family to hear the result of a petition for separation in which she is cited. An even more persuasive model may be Henry Arthur Jones's Mrs Dane's Defence (1900). Mrs Dane is trying to conceal from her small-minded community that she once had an affair with a married man.

In Act Three, she is confronted by Sir Daniel Carteret, a barrister with a fearsome reputation for cross-examination, who believes that the secret of someone's guilt may be revealed in 'a look, a gesture, a word, [which] will give you a peep into the very soul of a man or woman'. His blistering interrogation of Mrs Dane may have provided Rattigan with a model for Robert Morton's cross-examination of Ronnie at the end of Act Two. Rattigan usually wrote by beginning with characters, relationships or ideas, and then developing a plot out of them. For this project, he had, with some difficulty, to invert his usual practice: 'I found it a dreadful task and, after hurling the play many times into my mental wastepaper basket, I decided that the only way that the impossible equation would work out was by dint of some judiciously concealed cheating'. By the Autumn of 1945, as Chips Channon records in his diary, Rattigan was well under way with the piece. Channon recalls suggesting the ghastly title Ronnie v. Rex, which Rattigan temporarily adopted.

A month later, the play was practically complete, now retitled with Channon's rather better suggestion, The Winslow Boy. The play took six and a half weeks to write. H. M. Tennent Ltd. who had produced Rattigan's previous three plays took on The Winslow Boy. The part of Sir Robert Morton was offered to John Gielgud who turned it down, as he would with the part of Andrew Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version three years later. Instead the part went to the play wright and actor, Emlyn Williams. After a brief pre-London tour, The Winslow Boy opened at the West End's Lyric Theatre, with Frank Cellier and Madge Compton as the mother and father and Angela Baddeley as the suffragette sister. It ran for well over a year and won Rattigan the first of his two Ellen Terry Awards for Best New Play. The following year, the play opened in America, gaining the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. The Archer-Shee trial concerned a thirteen-year-old cadet at Osborne Naval College, Isle of Wight, accused of stealing a 5/-postal order from another cadet's locker.

The boy's high-handed expulsion from Osborne, despite his protestations of innocence, prompted the family to take an action against the Admiralty. Since it was protected by the Crown, the Navy was usually immune from civil actions; however, the Archer-Shees' barrister, Edward Carson, used the exceptional device of a Petition of Right,whereby a citizen could request special permission from the Crown to proceed. In May 1909, Edward VII received the Petition and, using the traditional form of words, signed across it, writing 'Let Right be done', allowing the prosecution to go ahead. The Admiralty managed to challenge the Petition of Right, but after a successful appeal, the trial opened on 26 July 1910. The boy's frankness and composure in the witness box impressed the court and the proceedings were widely reported.

After a series of dramatic cross-examinations and some inauspicious appearances by various Naval officers from Osborne, Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Admiralty's representative, rose on the fourth day of the trial to announce that 'I say now, on behalf of the Admiralty, that I accept the statement of George Archer-Shee that he did not write the name on the postal order, and did not cash it, and consequently that he is innocent of the charge'. As Edward Carson sat with tears in his eyes, members of the jury climbed over the barriers to congratulate members of the family. The case was quickly drawn into political debate; that afternoon, MPs questioned the First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna, arguing that his handling of the case had brought British justice into disrepute. One year later, the Admiralty had still not resolved the issue of damages (for which they may not have been legally responsible); George's brother, a recently elected Conservative and Unionist MP, brought the issue up in the House. Feeling was so strong that the Naval Estimates debate was squeezed to make room for it. After scenes of considerable rancour, McKenna was forced to recommend substantial compensation.

In June 1911, the month of Rattigan's birth, the Winslows were awarded £3000 plus costs. No formal letter of withdrawal or apology was ever sent. In a further historical irony, George Archer-Shee was old enough, when war was declared, to be called up. In 1914, an order to withdraw failed to reach his platoon in Ypres, and as they endeavoured to hold the front line, he was killed. Archer-Shees v. Admiralty was unexceptional in itself, only directly leading to some small amendments in the disciplinary rules in Naval Colleges. But it became a talisman for warring interests, each detecting in the case some echo of their own struggle. The time of the trial was a crossroads at which several debates about the Navy, democracy and representation met. 1910 was one of the most volatile years in British politics this century. Under the First Sea Lord, the monomaniacal John Fisher, a series of dramatic initiatives had begun to transform Britain's Navy. Not least of these was the commissioning of the Dreadnought in 1905, a huge battleship which rendered most other vessels obsolete.

Germany was rapidly rearming and Fisher urged that eight of these ships be built. The Liberal government of the time was more keenon domestic reform; but Fisher, sensing that if Britannia were to rule the waves then Britannia would have to waive the rules, used leaks to manipulate the press and public opinion in favour of his Dreadnought programme. Britain, having seen no major fleet action since the Battle of Trafalgar almost a century before, was rather unused to contemplating its Navy. To find itself propelled suddenly into the political arena, firstly over the Dreadnought and now over Archer-Shee, unsettled this already warring and divided institution even further. Furthermore, the House of Lords, which at that time could veto any legislation passed by the Commons, were making it impossible for the Liberals to get the programme through. Measures over education, land and licensing laws were having to be withdrawn or face mutilation by the Upper House's 'obscure and far from intelligent peers'. In 1909, Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, put together a 'People's Budget', designed to fund new welfare policies, like the provision of state pensions, that the Liberal government had recently introduced.

The funding plans for these measures hit most directly at the wealthy and so it was that when the bill was presented to the Lords, they rejected it. Two years of elections, debates and constitutional crisis were finally brought to an end when, in August 1911, mindful of Asquith's promise that five hundred new peers would be created to flood the Upper House, the Lords voted away their historic veto. The campaign for women's suffrage was on the threshold of its most fierce period of agitation. Riding on a century of increasing demand for the vote, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (1897), led by Millicent Fawcett, and the Women's Social and Political Union (1903), led by Emmeline Pankhurst, were formed. From 1906, the WPSU had led a more and more militant campaign, breaking up meetings, smashing windows, carrying out acts of arson, and – rather wittily – burning 'Votes for Women' into the grass of golf courses around the country. However, in July 1910, as George Archer-Shee stood in the witness box, the WPSU were holding back.

A new bill, framed by an all-party committee, which would have enfranchised one million women, had passed its first and second reading. But their hopes faded when Asquith announced a procedural move, designed to prevent any further progress of the legislation through the Commons. The bill was lost. The Suffragettes transformed this moment of huge disillusionment into a source of political energy and from here on their campaign became increasingly violent and bitter. What also marks the next four years is the savagery of the response to these women. The end of 1910 saw 'Black Friday' where a peaceful deputation of women to Parliament was physically abused and beaten by the police. And when imprisoned suffragettes, demanding to be treated as politicalprisoners, began hunger strikes, they were brutally force fed, through the mouth, nose and sometimes anus. And as the cruelty of this treatment began to reach public ears, Reginald McKenna, now Home Secretary, introduced the 'Cat and Mouse' Acts whereby suffragette prisoners would continually be released and rearrested.

The ambivalence of the Liberal government, which could fight tooth and nail to force legislation it was elected to introduce through parliament but also slither and twist in its desire to evade the demands for women's suffrage, provides a consider ably more unstable context for the Archer-Shee case than is often suggested. Far from being a simple moral lesson in 'the inviolable sovereignty of the individual', the trial was threaded through with ambivalences and tensions, which also provide Rattigan with traces that deepen and trouble The Winslow Boy. That a play set in this turbulent period of British political history should have been written in 1945 is not surprising. The Labour government, elected in July that year, was pledged to introduce the most radical and comprehensive series of social reforms that the country had seen for over a century. And yet the roots of much of this legislation, with its decisive abandonment of the nineteenth-century laissez-faire tradition, lay in the Liberal administrations of 1906-1914, in their development of state provisions for pensions, unemployment and health insurance.

Indeed the man most closely responsible for framing the national insurance legislation, William Beveridge, had been responsible for designing and popularising the national system of 'Labour Exchanges' which began operating in 1909. The landslide Labour victory had shocked many in Rattigan's circle, notably Henry 'Chips' Channon. But Rattigan did not share entirely in his Conservative friends' dismay. Under the influence of Anthony Asquith, son of the former Prime Minister, he had moved towards the Liberals. And his use of the source material is notable for its underplaying of the Tories rôle in fighting for George's innocence. In one notable piece of 'judiciously concealed cheating', he transformed the conservative Winslow daughter, Catherine, into a suffragette, and George's thirty-six year old elder brother, the Tory MP Major Martin Archer-Shee, into the undergraduate 'silly ass' Dickie Winslow. Indeed, when the play's pre-London tour came to Bristol, Rattigan had to take the still-living daughter to lunch and persuade her to accept his redrafting of her life.

The names of most of the characters have been altered (George becomes Ronnie Winslow, his parents Grace and Arthur, and Edward Carson is now Robert Morton) giving Rattigan room to widen the scope and implications of the case. The play's contemporary relevance was noted by the critics, and Rattigan uses the benefits of hindsight to place delicate layers ofirony upon the Archer-Shee story. While his adoption of the 'well-made play' structure has its own historical resonances, by displacing the action of the play from the court room to the home, Rattigan is able to present a set of wider emotional concerns that reflect upon and complicate the otherwise sentimental story of the boy pitted against the Admiralty. One thing that is notable about the play is how little Ronnie appears in it at all. He spends most of Act One standing in the garden, most of Act Three asleep and misses the trial in Act Four altogether. His climactic cross-examination at the hands of Robert Morton in Act Two represents his moment of most intense focus, and yet this sequence lasts barely five minutes of stage time.

His ambivalent position within the play is captured in the title, which connotes both Ronnie's centrality to the story, and his personal marginality within it. In fact, The Winslow Boy seems more interested in the family and Robert Morton. As Arthur Winslow loses his health, Dickie his undergraduate career and Catherine her fiancé, Grace asks Arthur what he is really doing it for: Arthur (Quietly.) For Justice, Grace. Grace That sounds very noble. Are you sure it's true? Are you sure it isn't just plain pride and self-importance and sheer brute stubbornness? Arthur (Putting a hand out.) No, Grace. I don't think it is. I really don't think it is – Grace (Shaking off his hand.) No. This time I'm not going to cry and say I'm sorry, and make it all up again. I can stand anything if there's a reason for it. But for no reason at all, it's unfair to ask so much of me. (p. 60) Grace's desperate attempts to preserve familial 'normality' indicate the complex interplay of private and public that weaves through so much of Rattigan's work.

And Grace's doubts are supported by the presentation of Arthur. On his first appearance, Rattigan describes him as having a 'deliberately cultured patriarchal air' (p. 5) as he takes up the position of head of the family, with his back to the fireplace. When John Watherstone appears to ask his permission to marry Catherine, elaborate – and somewhat farcical – arrangements are made to clear space for Arthur to discuss financial arrangements with the young suitor. Much of the first act revolves around the fearful responses of other members of the family, not wanting to be around when Arthur hears of Ronnie's dismissal. Rattigan observes well the tensions and absurdities of this traditional family: John's smirk at Desmond, having 'won' Catherine's hand (p. 20), Arthur's dismissive remarks about Grace's 'superstitious terrors' (p. 24) and his, at times, absurd formality (when he discovers that Ronniehas been expelled he orders Dickie to order Violet to order Ronnie to come downstairs). In depicting the family, Rattigan is careful to trace the play of male proprietorial gazes through which the women have to pass.

And Rattigan's keen delineation of this family sets up parallels which open up the simplistic court room drama that is unfolding. Intriguingly, while we never see a moment of the trial, the spirit of cross-examination pervades the play; Sir Robert's interrogation of Ronnie is anticipated in Arthur's financial questioning of John and his threatening appraisal of Ronnie at the end of the first act: 'if you tell me a lie, I shall know it, because a lie between you and me can't be hidden' (p. 28). Ronnie, moving from Admiralty to his father to Sir Robert, is passed from interrogation to interrogation; what links all of these is their patriarchal ferocity, their implacable and arbitrary decisions of right and wrong. Sir Robert's sudden decision that Ronnie is innocent and Arthur's firm belief that the inaudible Vicar is nonetheless a good man are part of a pattern of imperious decision-making that echoes the original, peremptory decision of the Admiralty. Through continual references to the emotional, physical and financial cost of the court case, Rattigan never lets Arthur's particular interests shape the entirety of our experience of this family. The play offers an alternative perspective in the character of Catherine.

Her coolly political perspective gives her a certain distance from the family (when the Winslows first appear she exempts herself from the conversation to read a Trade Union leader's memoirs); and it is Catherine who voices the debate that dominates so much of the play's interest in the story: the distinction between the technical employment of the law and her passionate advocacy of human rights. As so often with Rattigan, the play attempts to negotiate the relations between heart and head, this time focused between and within the characters of Catherine and Morton. The debate hangs on their two confrontations in Acts Two and Four. Rattigan, while allowing us considerable sympathy for Sir Robert, subtly weights the argument on Catherine's side. While Robert and Arthur are exclusively focused on the narrow issue of 'fact', Catherine sees this is a secondary (and finally unprovable) concern beside the broader issue of how power is deployed: 'His innocence or guilt aren't important to me. They are to my father. Not to me. I believe he didn't do it; but I may be wrong … All I care about is that people should know that a Government Department has ignored a fundamental human right and that it should be forced to acknowledge it' (p.71).

When the barrister appears at the Winslow home, she challenges him, referring ironically to one of his 'great forensic triumphs', his 'masterly' cross-examination of Len Rogers, a Trade Union leader. 'I supposeyou know,' she remarks, 'that he committed suicide a few months ago?' (p. 46). Rogers may be based on Joseph Wilson, founder of the National Union of Seamen, whose attempt to sue the Evening News for libel in 1893 was thwarted by his brutal cross-examination at the hands of Carson. But another incident that haunts this moment is Carson's most famous court room appearance: his interrogation of Oscar Wilde, during his libel case against the Marquis of Queensberry. After Carson's remorseless pursuit of Wilde, the case was lost, paving the way for Queensberry's counter-action, and Wilde's imprisonment and disgrace. The two characters do seem to swap places during the play. Sir Robert, whom Catherine described as 'a fish, a hard, cold-blooded, supercilious, sneering fish' (p. 63), is revealed to have forgone the post of Lord Chief Justice to pursue the case, and to have cried when the verdict was announced.

Earlier in the play Dickie had cautioned Catherine not to be too vocal about her political opinions ('Men don't like 'em in their lady friends, even if they agree with 'em') but Catherine is unconcerned: 'If there's ever a clash between what I believe and what I feel, there's not much doubt about which will win' (p. 32). While implying that Catherine may choose heart over head, Rattigan characteristically leaves the statement open. And finally, when her fiancé's father tries to force the family to drop the proceedings, Catherine discovers that her political engagement wins out over her affection for John. Sir Robert's unwilling revelation of emotional engagement in the case is counter pointed by Catherine's decision not to give in to her considerable emotional pressures. Although Catherine admits to not being a militant, this may be seen in the historical context of the Archer-Shee case when, as recounted above, the British suffrage movement was holding back from direct action as Asquith's government seemed on the point of introducing a limited vote for women. It was after this was reneged upon that the Suffragette Movement entered its most radical and militant phase.

Catherine's kind of feminism is contrasted with the frivolity of Miss Barnes's trivializing article (a kind of journalism to which Rattigan was himself often subjected). The final discussion between Robert and Catherine has sometimes been seen as a moment of compromise where left and right meet in some vague middle ground to admire the integrity of each other's political stance. But perhaps this is only half of the picture. While certainly Catherine becomes aware that Sir Robert has made some emotional investment in the case, his airy talk of Right as a form of absolute moral value is still undermined by his condescending opposition to women having the vote, and his unshakeable certainty that it is a 'lost cause' (p. 95). In 1946, almost twenty years after women were fully granted the vote on equal terms with men, Catherine's progressive position would have been apparent,leaving Robert Morton's soi-disant objectivity tainted by his own less than liberal convictions. For the audience in 1946, then, this is a play that cautioned against complacency and criticized claims of moral neutrality in favour of a continual compassionate questioning of assumptions.

The play has a considerably more complex relation to the new Labour government of 1945 than some critics have suggested. For the first time, the critics began to recognize Rattigan's complexity and skill, and that his apparently uncomplicated, well-made plays artfully concealed levels of narrative sophistication. Here, the tautly constructed first act interweaves different layers of plot driving the narrative on. Ronnie's appearance opens the play but when the family arrive back from church the plot focuses on Catherine's engagement and the network of responses to it. All the while, however, we are reminded of Ronnie's distressed presence by continual references to the rain and Grace's glimpse of a boy in the garden. The choreographing of the characters, and the slow spread of information, is expertly handled, culminating in the tense moment where Arthur is read Ronnie's letter. The first critics saw The Winslow Boy as a political play, the Daily Mail describing it as 'Mr Rattigan's tract for these particular times' and the Observer arguing that he 'has vigorously wedded doctrine and drama'.

Rattigan's sophisticated ambiguities in the play lead several critics to duck out of a full statement of what this doctrine is, most proffering vague statements about the 'liberty of the individual' (Observer). Emlyn Williams was initially given only tentative praise, some feeling that he was not quite able to convey Sir Robert's authority, although his performance was looked back on more warmly. All praised the Act Two curtain when the barrister unexpectedly accepts the brief, and generally critics found the play 'intensely exciting' (Sunday Times). Some found that the play was straying somewhat from what they perceived to be its main theme, and The Times found that after the verdict is announced, 'the play flickers uncertainly to its end'.

Like many of Rattigan's plays it was many years before London saw a professional revival, though it has always been a staple in regional repertory, with performances in Sheffield (1948), Nottingham (1961), Dundee (1969) and the Bristol Old Vic (1977), among many others; and in 1948, Robert Donat was admired as Robert Morton in a film adaptation, directed and co-scripted by the two men whose scepticism had helped inspire the project, Asquith and Grunwald. The film itself, also starring Margaret Leighton, Cedric Hardwicke and Marie Lohr, was a commercial success, even if, by taking the audience into the courtroom, it muddies the stage play's delicate shifts in focus. By 1970, London theatre had changed dramatically; the new, experimental, avant-garde fringe was achieving mainstreamrecognition in the Royal Court's 'Come Together' Festival, as a revival of The Winslow Boy, directed by Frith Banbury, starring Kenneth More as Sir Robert, Laurence Naismith as Arthur and Annette Crosbie as Catherine, opened at the New Theatre.

Most of the reviews focused upon seeing how Rattigan sized up in this new, hostile environment. Ronald Bryden mourned 'the playwright we lost to permissiveness' (Observer) and Philip Hope-Wallace found that 'the effectiveness of the dramatic method has not been found to have slipped or rusted' (Guardian). This faith was not universally shared by any means, Irving Wardle finding no pleasure in the craftsmanship – or 'cunning tricks' as he somewhat back-handedly describes it – other than 'watching the wheels go round' (Times). It was Albert Hunt, standard bearer of the new generation, who denounced Rattigan's craft as 'over-rated', 'a succession of rather clumsy devices' which consist in 'setting up the obvious in a rather laborious way'. But underlying Wardle and Hunt's criticisms was the belief that Rattigan's politics were lazy and complacent, based, as Hunt argued, on 'facile knowingness', presenting 'a world in which everything can be solved by a little craftsmanship'.

In 1983, when Michael Rudman revived the play at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Benedict Nightingale also saw the play as a little 'complacent', but was surprised to detect what the first critics did not, that the final scene 'emerges … as the moral climax of the evening' (New Statesman). And his political misgivings were now not widely shared. For Time Out, it 'remains as contentious and relevant as ever'. All of the critics praised the 'intelligent, detailed production' (Standard), describing Rudman's 'beautifully paced' direction (Guardian). What emerged more clearly from this production was the importance of Catherine, revealed in a strong performance by Diane Fletcher, and the way that Rattigan hints at Arthur's self-indulgence as he 'begins to bask in the limelight that has unexpectedly broken in on the chilly dusk of his retirement' (Sunday Telegraph). In 1994 the play was revived again in the West End, directed by Wyn Jones.

The production caught well the comic elements of the play (notably in Ian Thompson's forlorn Desmond Curry), and Peter Barkworth's Arthur was a more amiable, less frightening figure than in previous productions. Simon Williams as Robert Morton brought a breath of icy, aloof cynicism into his debates with Eve Matheson's playful but alert Catherine. As the play went on, the decline of the family was reflected in the shadows which blanketed more and more of the Winslows' drawing room. In America, Rattigan resisted urgings to give the play a rounder ending by suggesting romance between Sir Robert and Catherine, and still achieved his first real Broadway success. Howard Barnes found it 'a work of scope, imagination and cumulative emotional power' (New York Herald Tribune), Robert Coleman praised 'aplay notable for integrity, honesty and decent emotion' (New York Daily Mirror), and William Hawkins called it 'compelling, suspenseful and inspiring' (New York World Telegram). Most agreed that it was 'beyond dispute the best play he has so far written'.

The cast was uniformly praised, one critic noting that 'the repressed pathos of the British stiff upper-lip [which] can sometimes be uncomfortable in the theatre' is overcome by performances that give it 'a completely credible air of gallantry' (New York Post). Some critics were less delighted, two of them linking its perceived dramatic poverty with the financial crisis in Britain, part induced by America's sudden withdrawal of wartime credit (New York Daily News, New York Journal-American). The cruellest review was Louis Kronenberger's in PM, which dismissed the play as 'meretricious … evidence of an incorrigibly trashy mind'. The play also received an unusually successful Off-Broadway revival in the early eighties, which led one critic to enthuse that 'it has a plot … that moves forward ineluctably yet suspensefully, with exemplary crafted changes of pace; characters that, however peripheral, bulge with fore shortened but three-dimensional palpability; and, loveliest of all, areas of unstated possibility – opened but unfilled – in vistas where the audience's imagination is allowed free, creative play'.

Rattigan once remarked that if The Browning Version was his passport to heaven, The Winslow Boy was the leather wallet which contained it. It marked the beginning of a ten-year period in which Rattigan's premières received serious critical attention. Recognition began to grow of the scope of his ambitions, the sensitivity of his craft and the complexity of his emotional choreography. Dan Rebellato : Terence Rattigan. Preface. The Collected Plays of Terence Rattigan: Volume One. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953, p. xvii. : John Russell Taylor. The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play. London: Methuen, 1967. p. 151. : Arthur Wing Pinero. The Benefit of the Doubt. (Plays: XIV). London: Heinemann, 1896. : Henry Arthur Jones. Mrs Dane's Defence. in: Representative Plays: Volume Three. Edited by Clayton Hamilton. London: Macmillan, 1926. p. 214. : Terence Rattigan. 'How I Write My Plays.' Strand Magazine. cxii, 674.

(February 1947), p. 97. : Henry Channon. Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon. Ed. Robert Rhodes James. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, p. 502. Entry for 19 Aug. 1945. : ibid., p. 504. Entry for 17 September 1945. : See Rodney M. Bennett. The Archer-Shees Against the Admiralty: The Story Behind 'The Winslow Boy'. London: Robert Hale, 1973. : Ibid., p. 129. Terence Rattigan plays: timeline and synopsis - Telegraph Theatre Terence Rattigan plays: timeline and synopsis The British dramatist wrote 26 plays for the stage in his lifetime, making his name overnight in 1936 with the breezily assured comedy French Without Tears.

Terence Rattigan, director Anthony Asquith, and actor Neil North, on set of The Winslow Boy in 1948 Photo: REX FEATURES 5:21PM GMT 04 Jan 2011 1933 First Episode Rattigan’s first play was written while he was still at Trinity College, Oxford, with fellow undergraduate Philip Heimann. Originally titled Embryo, it was first produced in a small theatre near Kew Bridge in London on 11 September 1933. The play centres on four university undergraduates performing in Anthony and Cleopatra. The intimacy of two young men at the play’s heart and the depiction of the casual sex, drinking and gambling of undergraduate life caused a storm in the press and as a result the play transferred to the Comedy Theatre in the West End. It had only a brief run, however and was not a success with the critics, although it earned Rattigan £100 in royalties. 1935 A Tale of Two Cities Related Articles The fall and rise of Terence Rattigan 04 Jan 2011 This adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel was written in collaboration with John Gielgud.

The play was never produced, as the original production fell through when another adaptation appeared at the same time. In 1950 it appeared as a radio play. 1936 French Without Tears This play came after Rattigan had abandoned his studies in the hope of becoming a full-time playwright. It opened on November 6 at the Criterion Theatre, but was competing with two other large scale openings in the west end. Despite this the play was a critical and box office success (“Brilliant little comedy”, “Full marks”), running for 1030 performances in London. A comedy, the play centres on a group of undergraduate men at a ski resort in France who are wholly concerned with girls. The predatory young woman Diana meets and aims to seduce each one of them. It was made into a film in 1940 directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Ray Milland. 1938 Follow My Leader Working with a fellow former Oxford graduate Tony Goldschmidt, Rattigan wrote this farce about the rise of Hitler. Set in a country called Moronia, a plumber Hans Zedesi comes to power by blowing up the parliament building and blaming it on cowardly liberals.

It was completed in 1938 and Rattigan and Goldschmidt tried to rush it into production as Hitler had invaded Czechoslovakia but the censors banned it for fear of offending Hitler. It was allowed to be produced in 1940, and was, at the Apollo theatre on the 16 January. The play closed within weeks of opening. 1939 After the Dance This was Rattigan’s attempt to move away from comedy into more serious drama and premiered on 21 June at St James’s theatre in London. It ran for 60 performances, which was a disappointment to Rattigan. Dealing with the playwright’s own preoccupations, the play was about two talented young people who live a frivolous lifestyle and maintain they married for amusement and not love. When a third figure comes into the equation the couple have to face the truth of their lives to disastrous consequence. The play received excellent reviews but audiences dwindled due to the looming war. 1940 Grey Farm Written in collaboration with Hector Bolitho, it was first produced at the Hudson Theatre, New York on 3 May. Grey Farm also closed within weeks of opening.

1942 Flare Path After a short tour this play opened on the 13 August at the Apollo theatre. The plot follows a group of R.A.F airmen, during the evening before a bombing mission over Germany and the resulting day. It was a popular success, playing 679 performances and also pleased the critics. The play was later adapted into a film titled The Way to the Stars which starred Michael Redgrave, John Mills and Rosamund John. 1943 While the Sun Shines This play marked a return to comedy for the playwright. Taking place on the morning of Bobby Harpenden’s marriage to Elizabeth, the farce centres on three men’s attempts to win her away from Harpenden. The play opened on 24 December, while Flare Path was still being performed at the Apollo next door and ran for 1,154 nights. Theatre critic James Agate hailed it as “delightful, a little masterpiece of tingling impertinence”. It then transferred to the Lyric theatre in New York from the 19 September the following year. 1944 Love in Idleness (played in U.S.

as O Mistress Mine) Another comedy, Love in Idleness starred the famous stage couple Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. It opened on 20 December at the Lyric theatre in the West End and was performed in New York at the Empire theatre on 23 January 1946. Loosely based on the story of Hamlet, the plot looks at an idealistic, Labour-leaning eighteen year old boy who returns from evacuation to discover his mother is living with a reactionary Tory. The play was changed in rehearsals so that Rattigan’s original reflection of wartime socialist idealism was lost. The result was that critics disliked the lack of substantial plot but loved the main actors’ performances. 1946 The Winslow Boy The Winslow Boy is one of the most loved and best known of Rattigan’s plays. It is based on a 1911 court case where a 14 year old boy is wrongly accused of stealing a five shilling postal note and expelled from the Royal Naval Academy. The play opened on the 23 May at the Lyric Theatre, was directed by Glen Byam Shaw and ran for more than a year.

It won the Ellen Terry Award for the best new play produced in London and the New York Critics Circle award for the Best Foreign play as a result of its American run. 1948 Harlequinade A short, one act farce, this play was produced alongside The Browning Version under the title Playbill and opened at the Phoenix theatre on 8 September. The plot followed a theatrical family putting on a performance of Romeo and Juliet and was hailed by critics and public. Playbill won Rattigan the Ellen Terry Award for the second year in a row. 1948 The Browning Version First performed alongside Harlequinade, The Browning Version is about the last days in the career of an ageing classics teacher who’s academic life is fading following an illness. Despite being a success in London under the Playbill title, the play failed on Broadway, with Time Magazine condemning both plays as ‘bilge’. 1949 Adventure Story Paul Schofield played Alexander the Great in his first leading West End role in this ambitious play in which, most critics agreed, Rattigan overstretched himself.

Rattigan called it a play about a man who had set out “to conquer the world before he had succeeded in conquering himself.” As Alexander lies dying he remembers his conquests, tries to justify his ruthless and bloody rule, and wonders where it all went wrong. His last words in the play are 'Who is to succeed me to the throne of Asia? Who shall I condemn to death?' 1950 Who is Sylvia? (filmed as The Man Who Loved Redheads) The play’s failure rattled the playwright, and he moved on to a frothy comedy about a young man in pursuit of three identical women. A series of leading actors had turned the play down as not good enough, but it opened nonetheless, on 20th October 1950 at London’s Criterion Theatre. “This Will Not Do, Mr Rattigan,” was the Evening Standard’s response. 1952 The Deep Blue Sea In 1952 Rattigan followed two critical flops with what was widely regarded as his finest play to date. The Deep Blue Sea is a serious play, rumoured to have been born of the suicide of one of the writer’s former lovers.

He described it as “a study of obsession and of the shame that a sensitive, clear-minded and strong-willed woman must feel when she discovers she has inside her a compulsion that seems too strong for her to resist.” It opened for 500 performances in London in March to rave reviews, but was slaughtered by critics when it moved to New York. 1953 The Sleeping Prince (filmed as The Prince and the Showgirl) Sir Laurence Olivier played the Ruritanian prince who tries to bed an American chorus girl with empty romantic endearments, when the play first opened in November 1953. The critics called the show a waste of talent. Olivier also starred in the much talked about later film version, next to Marilyn Monroe. 1954 Separate Tables Separate Tables is two plays of one act each, both set in a hotel, and explore themes of different kinds of love. The play is believed to have been triggered by events in Rattigan’s emotional life, in particular the arrest of Rattigan’s friend and hero John Gielgud, who was accused of homosexual offences.

It opened at London’s St James’s Theatre on 22 September 1954 to huge critical and commercial success; it was shown 726 times in the West End and over 300 on Broadway. It was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1956. 1958 Variation on a Theme For a period of four years in the mid-50s Rattigan opened no new plays, and then, in 1958 announced out of the blue that his next work was intended to “blow up the establishment”. Variation on a Theme, covertly about a homosexual relationship, opened at the Globe Theatre on 8th May 1958, starring Margaret Leighton and directed by John Gielgud. It aimed to shock, and it did – though perhaps not for the reasons Rattigan had intended. Critics detected the play’s hidden agenda, and called it “tame”. 1960 Ross The story of British Army Officer and author T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) who, in 1922, hid his identity and went into the RAF under the disguise of a bookish man named ‘Ross’.

Starring Alec Guinness, it opened to a popular run at Theatre Royal, Haymarket. 1960 Joie de Vivre Rattigan’s musical version of French Without Tears, with music by Robert Stolz and song lyrics by Paul Dehn, closed after just four nights at the Queen’s Theatre. 1963 Man and Boy Rex Harrison and Laurence Olivier turned down invitations to play the lead of ‘Man and Boy’. They didn’t want to risk their reputations playing a ruthless, openly homosexual businessman. The first performance, in September 1963, had only a short run and received mixed reviews. A 2005 revival of the play, however, starring David Suchet, was highly acclaimed. 1970 A Bequest to the Nation Based on his television play, ‘Nelson’, the historic play tells the true story of the personal life of Horatio Nelson at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar. Ian Holm starred as Nelson in the first run of performances at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, which received damning reviews.

1973 In Praise of Love The wife of a Marxist writer tries to conceal the fact that she is dying of cancer, and tries to find him a new wife. A farcical she-knows-that-he-knows-but-he-doesn’t-know-that she-knows situation slowly unravels into a tense drama. Critics have drawn parallels between themes in the play and Rattigan’s life. When the play was first shown in London The Sunday Times critic described it as “the most piercing exposition of love under great stress that I have ever seen on the stage.” It will be revived by the Royal & Derngate this April as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenery year celebrations. 1976 Duologue In 1976 the stage adaptation of his 1968 short television play Duologue was shown at a London fringe theatre associated with the avant-garde and young theatre radicals. 1977 Cause Célèbre Despite doctors’ warnings that his cancer was spreading rapidly, in 1976 Rattigan decided to rewrite this 1975 radio play framed around the joint murder trial of two lovers, as a stage production.

It opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 4th July 1977, four months before his death. Rattigan took an evening out of hospital to attend the opening night. The rarely seen play will be revived by The Old Vic in March.

Question: Who wrote the 1946 work ‘The Winslow Boy’?
Answer: Terence Rattigan