Plays

Synopsis

French without tears ; The Winslow boy ; The browning version ; Harlequinade

"Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan" (Guardian) Constantly revived on stage, radio and television, Rattigan's plays demonstrate their continuing power to hold and move audiences.

This volume contains his best work from the thirties and forties, including his first play French Without Tears, about a group of "bright young things" attempting to learn French on the Riviera amid numerous distractions.

The second play The Winslow Boy, based on an actual case, is the powerful, deliberately well-made drama of a father's attempts to clear his cadet son's name against the assembled might of Britain's naval establishment - the Admiralty.

Completing the volume are two one-act plays Harlequinade, a sustained joke against some well-worn theatrical conventions and The Browning Version which portrays a disliked classics master, Crocker-Harris on the point of retiring after eighteen years of unsuccessful teaching "well up there among the dozen greatest plays written in this country this century."

(The Spectator) "Terence Rattigan is the English Tennessee Williams.

He maps out the same fatal divorce between the spiritual and the physical, the same drama of lost souls and misdirected lusts, of people stranded with their frustrations, blasted by guilt and reaching out for rescue that they know full well will fail" (Sunday Times)