Recent years have seen
a sustained revival of the work of Terence Rattigan. New
productions have been greeted with surprised delight that
the acknowledged master of the 'well made play' can continue
to provoke such powerful emotions. As Rattigan himself wrote
'I believe that the best plays are about people, and not
about things'. This volume is one of a series of new editions
of his most enduring work. Each has an authoritative and
up-to-date introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.
First performed in 1954,
when Rattigan was at the height of his powers, Separate
Tables consists of two linked one-act plays set in
a run-down residential hotel near Bournemouth. In one a
lonely divorcee tracks down her former husband in order
to resume a kind of half-life with him. In the other a repressed
young spinster offers brave moral support to a fake major
accused of importuning women in a local cinema. 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 in this edition for the
first time.
Cast: 2 Men, 9 Females
First Produced: 1954-St
James' Theatre, London
ISBN: 1-85459-424-9
Price £8.99
Sold in UK only
(Also published by 'SAMUEL FRENCH')
