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Home , Armchair Theatre, A Day by the Sea, Charing Cross Theatre, Daniel Weyman, David Leveaux, FlatSpin

Master Media and Karl Sydow in association with Two’s Company present

A DAY BY THE SEA by N. C. Hunter

programme by N. C. HUNTER

Cast in order of speaking Director Tricia Thorns Miss Mathieson Stephanie Willson Set Designer Alex Marker governess to the children Costume Designer Emily Stuart Elinor Eddison Tatum Smith-Sperling or Lighting Designer Neill Brinkworth daughter of Frances by her first marriage Beatrix Taylor Sound Designer Candice Weaver Toby Eddison Jack Swiftor Production Manager Owen Donkin Elinor’s brother George Taylor Stage Manager /Operator Remi Bruno Smith Doctor Farley David Acton Rehearsal Stage Manager Naomi Buchanan Brooks Doctor to David Performance Stage Manager Lauren Burns David Anson David Whitworth Design Assistant Natalie Furnell Calvert Laura’s brother-in-law Costume Assistant Samina Sattar Laura Anson Susan Tracy Assistants to the production Elizabeth Holden and Jan Rae a widow Production photography Philip Gammon Frances Farrar Alix Dunmore Press Anne Mayer (020 3659 8482) recently divorced from her second husband Marketing Mel Cox, Target Live William Gregson David Gooderson a solicitor Poster & programme design Jon Bradfield Producer Graham Cowley Julian Anson John Sackville Laura’s son, in the Foreign Office Our grateful thanks to: Duncan Coombe; Paul Grimwood; Humphrey Caldwell Hugh Sachs Miller Centre Theatre for costumes; Ladies’ hair by Lynne of an official in the Foreign Office Emslie Griffin at Stars; Guy Chapman for extra marketing help; Out of Joint for rehearsal space; Phil Gammon and Tony Pescod for the boat; Jenny and Peter Parker and the Bottom Act I Group for props; Ian Black, Sadie Crowder, Angus Duke, The garden of Laura Anson’s house in Dorset. Mariella Neubauer, Esther O’ Loughlin, Oliver Potter, Andrew A morning in early May 1953 Quick, Victoria Smith, Abena Weston, Fengfan Zhou for help with set building and painting; . Act II, Scene 1 Lighting and other equipment supplied by DCLX: A beach nearby, the same afternoon www.dclx.co.uk INTERVAL Particular thanks to those who have contributed to the costs of this production. A Day by the Sea is generously supported by Act II, Scene 2 Backstage Trust, The Boris Karloff Charitable Foundation and The beach, an hour later the Leche Trust. Act III The garden again. Next morning EastEnders, Silent Witness, Cedar Street. Lovejoy, Rumpole of the Bailey, Family, Trexx And Flipside, City Television: Genius: Einstein, THE COMPANY Passage, Hollyoaks, Tchaikovsky, Film: Wall (Master Tenko. Bluebell, Mr Sloane and Of Vice, The Catherine Tate The Crown (Series 1 and 2), The Bill, Blair on Trial, Class of Media) Cuffs. Show, Him And Us, Housewife, Royal Wives At War, Doctors, ’76, Casanova’s Love Letters, 49, Midsomer Murders, Foyles Casualty, House Of Anubis, Alix is a founder member of the Film: Limited Edition. Fooling Hitler, The Wyvern War, Riot At The Ritz, Rome, The Secret of Crickley Hall, Fitzrovia Radio Hour. Radio includes two long stints Mystery, Randall and Hopkirk Dark Matters, Young John Paul on the BBC The Shell Seekers, Murder (Deceased), Casualty. II, The Sunday Night Project, Company. Investigation Team, Prime David was a member of the BBC Suspect 6, Perfect Strangers, Brief Encounter of an Ordinary Writing includes The Wind in Radio Drama Company 2014-15. Aristocrats, Giving Tongue. Woman, Rosemary & Thyme, the Willows (), Midsomer Murders, The Royal, Film: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Kolbe’s Gift( Square Heartbeat, The Bill. Theatre), Hector (National Stranger, The Nutcracker: The Film: Lost & Found (Dean Street Tour), The Killing of Mr Toad Untold Story, Like Minds, The Productions), The Hoarder () and Walk Libertine, Love, Honor and Obey. (Atlantic Picture Company/ or Die, Death of a Village (BBC Lionsgate), Fossil (Brickwall Radio 4). Films), The Lost City Of Z (Plan B/Studio Canal), Hampstead DAVID ACTON (Ecosse Films/Motion Picture Doctor Farley Capital), The Wedding Date Theatre includes The Woman (Universal). in Black ( and DAVID GOODERSON Awards: The McEuen Rosebowl national tour); Jane Wenham William Gregson for Acting for the title role in the Witch of Walkern (Out For Two’s Company: A Kind of , at the Scottish Student of Joint/Watford Palace/ Alaska (Pleasance, Edinburgh). Drama Festival. Arcola); Richard II (Palace of ALIX DUNMORE Other theatre includes The Westminster and Arcola). A Frances Farrar Potting Shed, Portraits, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Trained at the TATUM SMITH-SPERLING The Flouers O’Edinburgh Elinor Comedy of Errors, Henry V and Theatre School. (Finborough Theatre), The After- Theatre includes: lead roles in a (Propeller); Anjin: For Two’s Company: The Fifth Dinner Joke, The Conquering JOHN SACKVILLE number of school & Stagecoach The Shogun and the Samurai Column and What The Women Hero, The Woman Hater, De Julian Anson productions. Tatum has taken (Tokyo and Sadler’s Wells); Did (), Monfort, Saint’s Day, The Road HUGH SACHS Theatre includes: the title LAMDA exams in acting, verse The League of Youth, Vertigo, London Wall (Finborough to Ruin, The Good Woman Humphrey Caldwell role in William Wordsworth Burial at Thebes and I Have and prose. and St James Theatre). Other of Setzuan, A Penny for a Theatre includes: The (English Touring Theatre), The Been Here Before (Nottingham theatre includes: King Kong, Song (, Roundabout ( Trial of Jane Fonda (Assembly Film: extra work in Swimming Playhouse); Relatively Speaking A Comedy and A Christmas Richmond), The Importance and 59e59 Theater, New York), Rooms, Edinburgh Festival), With Men. and Copenhagen (Newbury Carol (Vaults); Ben Hur (Tricycle of Being Earnest (national Amadeus, One Man Two An Inspector Calls (National This is Tatum’s first professional Watermill); The Dark Things Theatre), The 39 Steps (Criterion, tour), A Midsummer Night’s Guvnors, A Woman Killed With Theatre/PW Productions), stage production. (Edinburgh Traverse); Richard West End), Gaslight (New Vic, Dream, Ariadne on Naxos, Die Kindness, Peter Pan (National The Winslow Boy (Rose II (Old Vic Company); Much Newcastle-Under-Lyme), Top Fledermaus (English Touring Theatre), Anything Goes, The Theatre, Kingston), A Man JACK SWIFT Ado About Nothing (Peter Hall Girls (Out of Joint), The Dead Opera), , Cherry Orchard, The Country For All Seasons (Theatre Royal Toby Company); Hamlet, The Comedy Guy (English Theatre Frankfurt), Richard III, (Ludlow Wife (Sheffield Crucible),See Haymarket), Othello and Volpone of Errors, The Constant Couple, Nature Adores a Vacuum (Soho Festival), A Midsummer Night’s How They Run (Royal Exchange, (RSC), A Cloud in Trousers (York For Two’s Company: What The Man of Mode, The Love of Theatre), Separate Tables (Mill Dream, , The Boys from ), Humble Boy (tour), Theatre Royal & Southwark the Women Did (Southwark the Nightingale, King Lear, As at Sonning), A Winter of War Syracuse, Lady be Good (Open Privates On Parade (Donmar Playhouse), Plunder, Lone Flyer, Playhouse). Other theatre You Like It, Henry V, Edward III, (Cheltenham Everyman), The Air Theatre, Regent’s Park), The Warehouse), One Flew Over Witch, Dust (Watermill Theatre), includes: Creation Mystery Two Noble Kinsmen (Bristol Old Play (St Barnabas Church) and Eastward Ho!, The Roman Actor Taming of the Shrew (Middle The Cuckoo’s Nest (Touring Our Country’s Good and Vic). a number of Stagecoach and (RSC). East tour) and Consortium), Peter Pan (West Cyrano de Bergerac (Nuffield school plays. Television: Diaries of the Great Television: Casualty, Doctors, (Singapore). Playhouse). Theatre, Southampton), Party War, Downton Abbey, Doctors, Call The Midwife, Television: , A Television: The Interceptor, (, London), Hamlet Hostage (Fire in the Desert), Radio: The Simon Day Show, 49 Touch of Frost, Mapp and Lucia, Family Tree, Benidorm, My (Oxford Stage Company). BEATRIX TAYLOR Theatre Northampton), Mrs Tree), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel the Cloth (Southwark Playhouse), over the last 12 years: Red Night Elinor Moore in A Passage to India (), Aladdin her own plays Breakfast (Finborough Theatre), My Real For Two’s Company: What (Lyric, Hammersmith and New (Aylesbury, Milton Keynes on the Beach and Creation War 1914 - ? (Trafalgar Studios the Women Did (Southwark York), Evangeline Harcourt and ), (with casts of 40, St Barnabas and 2 national tours), The Playhouse). Other theatre in Anything Goes (National Sleeping Beauty (Waterside, Church, Dulwich), A Hard Searcher (), includes: a Munchkin in the Theatre and Theatre Royal Aylesbury), The Woman in Black Rain (Above the Stag), London Ex (), London Wizard of Oz and acting, singing Drury Lane), Mary Tyrone in (Gothenburg English Studio Wall (Finborough and St James Wall (Finborough and transfer and dancing in school events. Long Day’s Journey into Night, Theatre and Stadsteater in Theatres), My Real War 1914-? to St James Theatre), What the She is also studying LAMDA ( Company), Stockholm), The Widowing of (Trafalgar Studios and national Women Did, The Cutting of the and voice at Italia Conti. Beatrice in Much Ado about Mrs Holroyd, The Thunderbolt, tour), The Searcher (workshop Cloth and The Fifth Column Nothing (Regent’s Park Theatre), Mary Goes First, A Journey to production at Greenwich (Southwark Playhouse).

Gertrude in Hamlet (Sheffield London, Double Double, Trifles, Theatre), Red Night (Finborough He is also resident designer GEORGE TAYLOR Crucible), Fay in Loot (Royal Sauce for the Goose, King Lear, Theatre), What the Women at the Finborough Theatre, Toby Exchange,. Manchester), Denial Magnificence (Orange Tree), Did (Southwark Playhouse STEPHANIE WILLSON where he has designed over For Two’s Company: What (Bristol Old Vic), Sophia in The Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and and revived there in 2014 for Miss Mathieson 40 productions including: The the Women Did (Southwark Old Wives Tale (Victoria Theatre Juliet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado the Great War Centenary), White Carnation (and transfer Trained at the Arts Educational Playhouse). Other theatre Stoke-on-Trent), Berinthia in About Nothing, A Midsummer Forgotten Voices from the Great to Jermyn Street), Dream School, London. includes: Prince Charming and The Relapse, Natasha in Three Night’s Dream, Henry V, As You War (Pleasance London), Ex of the Dog (and transfer to an ugly sister in Cinderella in Sisters, Emilia in Othello, Anna Like It, The Dark Lady of the Theatre includes: Damsels in and Black ‘Ell (Soho Theatre), Trafalgar Studios) and Plague school productions. He attends in , Mistress Ford Sonnets, Love’s Labours Lost Distress trilogy: PC Grace Page Twelfth Night(Dulwich Picture Over England (and transfer to Italia Conti. in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Open Air Theatre, Regent’s in GamePlan, Annette Sefton- Gallery), (Alleyn’s the ). At the (Royal Shakespeare Company). Park), Rigor Mortis (Finborough), Wilcox in FlatSpin and Dee Theatre) and Passion Play 2000, Finborough he recently directed Television: Midsomer Murders, The Second Mrs Tanqueray Jobson in RolePlay (Pitlochry a huge community play which the first production for over 60 The Cry, Casualty, Doctors, (), London Festival Theatre), This Happy she also wrote. As an actress, years of J. B. Priestley’s play, Holby City, The Bill, Poirot, The Assurance (National Theatre), Breed (Yvonne Arnaud), theatre includes End of Story Summer Days Dream. Wuthering Heights (Birmingham Jury, Lewis, The Diary of Anne Joking Apart, Pardon Me, (), Harry and Me Other productions that Alex Frank, Three Sisters, The Stars Rep and National Tour), The Prime Minister (Theatre Royal, (Warehouse), Façade (Dingley Mousetrap (St Martin’s Theatre). has designed this year include: Look Down, Pull the Other One, Windsor), Othello - The Doctor’s and Dulwich Festivals), A Kind The Firm (), Born and Bred, Minder. TV: Alan Titchmarsh Show, The Tale (Shakespeare’s Globe), of Alaska (Edinburgh, tour and Sherlock Holmes and the Bill, Nicholas Nickleby, Jasper Miracle on 34th Street (UK No. 1 USA), Time’s Up (Windsor), The Crimson Cobbles (The Theatre Carrott, Big Deal, Poldark, Miss Tour), A Hard Rain (Above The Libertine and The Man of Mode Chipping Norton and tour), Jones and Son, Colditz, Z Cars, Stag), Abigail’s Party, Wait Until (Royal Court and Out of Joint Lie With Me (LAMDA), Strictly Coronation Street, A Family at Dark, The Importance of Being tour), (BAC and tour), Murder (National Tour) and War, Barlow, Armchair Theatre. Earnest, Boeing Boeing (three Run For Your Wife (West End) Dead Simple (The Mill at Film: Love’s Kitchen, Little summer weekly Rep Seasons and leading roles in theatres in Sonning). Dorrit. at the Manor Pavilion Theatre), Salisbury, Ipswich, Edinburgh, SUSAN TRACY He is also director of the Whodunnit and Stepping Out Liverpool, Guildford, and Laura Anson Questors Youth Theatre in West (Greenwich Theatre), Romeo and many more. Her many television London. Theatre includes: Duchess of Juliet (UK tour), Shakespeare for and film appearances include York in Wars of the Roses (Rose Breakfast (Edinburgh Festival). Dangerfield, A Touch of Frost, www.alexmarker.com Theatre Kingston), Variation on Keeping Up Appearances, The a Theme (Finborough Theatre), A Darling Buds of May, The Bill, TRICIA THORNS EMILY STUART Chorus of Disapproval (Harold London’s Burning, Captives and Director Costume Designer Pinter Theatre), Doll Common . in Playhouse Creatures and DAVID WHITWORTH Tricia began her career as an Trained at Wimbledon School Mrs Elton in The Deep Blue David Anson actress in the West End as part of Art Sea ( Festival For Two’s Company: London of John Neville’s company at ALEX MARKER For Two’s Company: The Fifth Theatre), Inherit the Wind, Wall (Finborough Theatre and St the Fortune, after a Classics BA Set Designer Column, The Cutting of the Duchess of York in Richard James’s). Other theatre includes from Nottingham University. As In his role as Associate Designer Cloth, What the Women Did II (Old Vic), Lady Wishfort in French Without Tears (English a director, her work includes The for Two’s Company Alex has (Southwark Playhouse), London The Way of the World (Royal Touring Theatre and Orange Fifth Column and The Cutting of designed all of their productions Wall (Finborough Theatre and St James Theatre), Ex (Soho Theatre), In the Night Garden , and , directed featuring Sir , Theatre). Live (Minor/BBC), The Divided most recently the . by with , Samantha Other theatre Costume Design Laing (), Dessa Upcoming work includes choreography by Stephen Mear; Bond and Burt Reynolds and My includes: Much Ado about Rose, As Is, Step 9 of 12, Tape Network and Pinocchio in the And Then There Were None with Week With Marilyn featuring Nothing (Shakespeare in the (Trafalgar Studios), Sweat Lyttelton Theatre. Tara Fitzgerald (Gielgud); the Michelle Williams, Dame Judi Squares), Robinson Crusoe Factory (YMT, Sadlers Wells), London and Sydney production Dench & Kenneth Branagh and Dido & Aeneas, Jephthe (English of Dance of Death with Sir Ian beginning principle photography and Robin Hood (The Theatre, KARL SYDOW Touring Opera), The White McKellen, this autumn Red Joan featuring Chipping Norton), Martine Producer (Finborough Theatre), The Feather (Union Theatre), and Owen Teale; Bea Arthur Dame Judy Dench. New York: NT’s Happy Days Blinding Light, The Living Contact.Com (Park Theatre), (Savoy); Auntie and Me with In Lambeth and Who do we starring and directed Alan Davies and Margaret Room, Anyone can Whistle, GRAHAM COWLEY Think We Are? (Southwark by Deborah Warner (Brooklyn Tyzack (Wyndham’s); Michael Natural Affection and Bloody Producer Academy of Music); Haunted Moore, Live! (Roundhouse); Poetry (Jermyn Street Theatre), Playhouse), Café Chaos, A by Edna O’Brien; Terra Haute the West End revival of Noël Graham has produced all Shiverman (Theatre 503), Square of Sky (The Kosh), The by Edmond White; The Seagull Coward’s Semi-Monde; Kevin of Two’s Company’s shows, Antigone (Southwark Playhouse), Seagull (Arcola), An Enemy of with and Elyot’s Mouth to Mouth with including his own translation of Murder In The Cathedral the People (Albany), Strauss Gala (Raymond Gubbay), Carey Mulligan; All My Sons and Michael Véronique Olmi’s End of Story. (Oxford Playhouse), Flock Bridgetower (City of London directed by Simon McBurney Maloney (Albery); David Producer for Out of Joint for (Northern stage), Lingua Franca Festival/ETO), Vincent River with Katie Holmes; American Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow with 15 years and now Associate. (Finborough Theatre and E9E59, (Old Vic productions), Antigone, Buffalo and Our Country’s Good Mark Strong, Patrick Marber Previously with the Theatre of New York) Lysistrata, Prometheus/The by Timberlake Wertenbaker and Kimberly Williams; Comedy Company, the Royal Emily has twice won the Frogs/Agamemnon (Cambridge (six Tony nominations, NY Drummers by Simon Bennet Court Theatre (on whose behalf award for best Arts Theatre), Adding Machine, Critics’ Award for Best Foreign and Some Explicit Polaroids by he transferred Death and the costume design: in 2011 for Accolade, Don Juan Comes Back Play). North America: Backbeat Mark Ravenhill – winner of Maiden, Oleanna, Six Degrees of Anyone Can Whistle and again in from the War, Fanta Orange (Royal Alexandra, Toronto the Evening Standard Award as Separation, My Night with Reg 2016 for The Cutting of The Cloth. (all Finborough Theatre), Seven and Ahmanson, Los Angeles). Most Promising Newcomer, both and The Weir to the West End), She was nominated in the same Pomegranate Seeds (Oxford International Tours: The Last directed by Max Stafford-Clark Paines Plough, the Half Moon category in 2014 for Martine. Playhouse). Confession with , for Out of Joint; Macbeth with Theatre, Joint Stock Theatre the centennial production of Group, Greenwich Theatre and Film includes: Drunken As Associate: Lohengrin (Warsaw Rufus Sewell (Queen’s); A Swell Under Milk Wood; and the Out the London Palladium. His Butterflies (Rockhopper National Opera) Ludd & Isis Party – A Celebration Of Cole of Joint revival of Our Country’s origins as an actor are hidden in productions) and London (ROH), Maria Stuarda (Opera Porter (Vaudeville); Timberlake Good. Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s the mists of time. Wall (Master Media). She has North), Lohengrin (WNO), Good (Olivier Award for Best recently been working on film Symbionts (Wayne MCcGregor, London: The Fifth Column with Play); Hysteria (Olivier Award for installations with The Postal Estonia National Ballet) Two’s Company; Backbeat Museum and The SS Great directed by David Leveaux; Best Comedy) and an adaptation Britain (opening 2018). A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson of Sue Townsend’s novel The CANDICE WEAVER directed by Max Stafford-Clark; Queen and I which was Out of Sound Designer Triptych by Edna O’Brien; Joint’s inaugural production. NEILL BRINKWORTH Candice is a recent graduate Memory directed by Terry Karl continues to serve on the Lighting Designer of RADA having completed a Hands; The Line directed by board of Out of Joint, the UK For Two’s Company: The Fifth postgraduate diploma in Sound Mathew Lloyd and Jenufa leading producer of new writing Column, The Cutting of the Design for Theatre, and has directed by Irina Brown, for the theatre. Cloth (Southwark Playhouse). previously completed a degree both written by Timberlake Karl also served as a director Other recent Lighting Designs: in Music at the University of Wertenbaker (Arcola); Ring of Renaissance Film Company. Mozart vs Machine (Mahogany Westminster. Previous sound Round the Moon directed by He continues to act as an Opera), The Dark (Fuel Theatre), designs include the Southwark (Playhouse); independent film producer; Billy the Kid (NYMT, Leicester Playhouse, the Arcola Theatre, Dirty Dancing (Piccadilly, projects with David Parfitt, his Curve), Tamburlaine (Yellow and the Edinburgh Fringe, and Aldwych, UK tour, Germany, colleague from Renaissance Earth), Children of Killers (NT other work includes various France, Australia and Italy); for Trademark Films, include Connections, Olivier Theatre), productions at the National the spectacular multimedia A Bunch of Amateurs by Ian The Meeting (Hampstead Theatre, Secret Cinema, the production Sinatra at the Hislop and Nick Newman directed and also played the leading part of Julian Anson. (It was during the run that the recently-knighted Gielgud was arrested for “cottaging”). The play was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike and ran for a year. His next play, A Touch of the Sun (1958) starred and his daughter Vanessa, in her first West End role. An idealistic schoolmaster defends his ascetic way of life after he and his family are treated to a trip to the south of France by wealthy relatives. Hunter himself lived simply in a farmhouse in North Wales, far from the celebrity life. The wave of new drama that crashed over London theatre in the late 1950s, championed by the likes of Kenneth Tynan and Bernard Levin, swept aside the kings of the West End, Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward, J.B. Priestley, and N.C. Hunter disappeared along with them. Hunter continued, though the turbulent sixties, to write a range of thoughtful dramas, including The Tulip Tree (1962) and The Excursion (1964). He admired several of the younger writers emerging, particularly and Joe Orton, and wrote, “In a live and healthy theatre, there should be room for everything: the open stage and the proscenium, the play of commitment and the frivolous farce, Ibsen and Feydeau, and the ‘tragical-comical- historical-pastoral’. It should be as varied, surely, as the tastes of the society it reflects are varied.” Hunter died on The 1953 production at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket 19 April 1971, aged 62. In recent years the tide has turned, and Coward’s and N.C. Hunter (1908-1971) Rattigan’s plays are frequently seen on stages large and N.C. Hunter was one of the leading playwrights of the 1950s. As the – small. It is surely time to welcome back such a clear- and the like – exploded around him, Hunter continued to provide moving sighted and compassionate observer of English society as portraits of a people questioning their own purpose in chaotic post-war England. N.C. Hunter. N. C. Hunter Norman Charles Hunter was born in September 1908 in Derbyshire. Originally intending to N.C. Hunter on A Day by the Sea: follow in the footsteps of his father, a decorated Lieutenant Colonel, he went to Sandhurst “Perhaps it is because I am myself in the forties that it seems to me that the strains and and in 1930 was commissioned into the Dragoon Guards. Three years later he left the army, stresses of middle-age are a rewarding subject for the playwright. determined to make a literary career. He wrote plays, novels and poetry, and found some moderate success. All of his early plays are farcical comedies, and while no masterpieces, “Middle-age – the word suggests the predicament in which many of us find ourselves at forty, they show a writer developing his own themes and his craft. He joined the BBC in 1938 as a with a foot in two worlds, half-way between youth and age, promise and achievement. At writer and producer, but re-joined the army when war broke out in 1939. forty it is natural to look back and to look forward, to measure progress, to compare past hopes and present realities. And if the comparison brings little comfort, there is always this After war service in Italy with the Royal Artillery Hunter returned to playwriting in 1947. to remember: it is late, but not too late. There is still time, at forty, to do what is still undone. It was in 1951, with , that he came to prominence, going on to become To succeed, to change one’s mind, to shape one’s life anew – there is still time, but there is not one of the most successful and popular playwrights of his day. Hunter’s plays caught the very much. The mistakes from which one can recover in youth cannot be made now, truths mood of a nation shaken by economic insecurity and post-imperial decline, with characters can no longer be evaded, decisions no longer postponed. groping for purpose. Waters of the Moon depicted English gentility struggling for survival. “This element of Last Chance gives this age its peculiar urgency, its air of crisis. My play is Helped by star casting – and – the play ran for two years at the chiefly about such a crisis in the life of a forty-year-old official in the Foreign Service, and Haymarket. shows how it grows in the mind, how it develops and is resolved. It is a quiet play for, it seems A Day by the Sea opened in 1953 at the same theatre, with a cast packed with theatrical to me, this is often how such crises come and pass – in a garden, on a beach, casually, on a Dames and Knights: , Sybil Thorndike, and . day in summer.” Rehearsal photos by Jon Bradfield & Philip Gammon The final Forgotten Voices project wasMy Real War 1914-?, adapted by Tricia Thorns from the letters home of Lt. Havilland le Mesurier, a young officer killed in 1916. It toured twice and played at the Trafalgar Studios in London. The company departed from its main aim of rediscovering the “new plays of the past” with a new musical play, Ex by Rob Young with music by Ross Lorraine, at the Soho Theatre in 2011, before returning with London Wall at the Finborough Theatre. Set in a solicitor’s office in 1931 and first produced that year, it shone a light on the lives of Simon Darwen and Michael Edwards in The Fifth Column women working in offices, the work they did, the money they earned (not much) and the predatory attitude of their male colleagues. It was As a protest against the US/UK invasion of Iraq in so well received it transferred to the St James Theatre. 2003, Two’s Company quickly mounted a production of ’s Black ’Ell at Soho Theatre. To mark the Great War Centenary there was a revival in 2014 of Philip Desmeules in The play shows a young officer, returning from the What The Women Did in the new Southwark Playhouse. We returned My Real War 1914-? front, decorated for bravery but traumatised by his to Southwark Playhouse with the world premiere of The Cutting of experience and refusing to go back. We felt that this the Cloth by Michael Hastings. Based on the author’s youthful experience as a Savile Row cry of pain and rage written in 1916 expressed better tailor’s apprentice, it depicted the eternal struggle between dedication to craft and skill and than anything the folly of starting another war. the pressure to make money. This play was the first in a series of what Two’s The most recent production was the English premiere of Ernest Hemingway’s only play, Company became best known for: the rediscovery of The Fifth Column, about journalism and plays about the First World War, written during the Lisa Jackson, Peter Symonds, espionage in the Spanish Civil War, written in War or soon after. The first season,Forgotten Voices Daniel Weyman in Black 'Ell Madrid in 1936 as shells fell around him. from the Great War at Pleasance London, consisted of three short plays, ‘D’ Company and Black ’Ell by Miles Malleson, and Brigade Exchange by Ernst Johannsen. On publication in Earlier productions include Betrayal by 1916, Malleson’s plays had been denounced in the House of Commons as “a calumny on (BAC and Tour), A Kind of the British soldier” and all copies were seized by the police. Johannsen had served in the Alaska by Harold Pinter (Edinburgh Festival German Army in the War. Written for radio, his play had achieved international success and tours of UK and USA), Harry and Me by before being banned when the Nazis came to power. Nigel Williams (, Croydon) and End of Story by Véronique Olmi (Chelsea The next in the Forgotten Voices series wasWhat The Women Did at Southwark Playhouse, Theatre). another triple bill, featuring Luck of War by Gwen John, Handmaidens of Death by Herbert Tremaine and The Old Lady Shows Her Medals by Alix Dunmore in London Wall J.M. Barrie. The third episode was Red Night by James El-Sharawy and Andy de la Tour in James Lansdale Hodson at the Finborough Theatre The Cutting of the Cloth in 2005, which showed the comradeship and humour, fading to disillusion, of a platoon facing Two’s Company (Theatre) Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England no 4978880, Registered Charity no 1105633. misery and death in the trenches. Directors: Graham Cowley, Ian Talbot OBE, Tricia Thorns. 020 8299 3714 or [email protected] The last rediscovery was Velona Pilcher’s The Searcher, an expressionist play with music by Two’s Company is grateful to the following for their support for Edmund Rubbra, about Red Cross nurses tasked previous productions: Arts Council England, , the Britten-Pears Foundation, Ray Cooney, the Feminist with finding what had happened to men missing Review Trust, the Foyle Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, in battle. This was presented as a workshop the Garrick Charitable Trust, the Golsoncott Foundation, the production as part of Greenwich Theatre’s Musical Manifold Trust, Master Media Ltd, the Mercers’ Company, Karl Elliott Inglese, Jonathan Warde, Phil Sealey Futures. Sydow, the Royal Victoria Hall Foundation, the Sylvia Waddilove in Red Night Charitable Foundation, Vera Thorns, Unity Theatre Trust. ‘Southwark Playhouse churn out arresting productions at a rate of knots’ Time Out

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