A Day by the Sea - Finborough Theatre
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE FIRST revival of the 1953 West End hit, A Day by the Sea by N C Hunter, will be performed at Finborough Theatre as a companion piece to Nicholas de Jongh’s Plague Over England – on March 31, and April 6, 7, 13 and 14, 2008.
Set in Dorset after the Second World War, A Day by the Sea, described as both gently comic and profoundly tragic, captures a ‘Chekhovian’ sense of loss, shattered ambitions and personal isolation amongst a distinctly English group of characters.
A Day by the Sea was a hit at the Haymarket Theatre in 1953. It was directed by and starred John Gielgud, with Ralph Richardson, Irene Worth, Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson. It was during the play’s run that Gielgud was arrested in a Chelsea public lavatory and subsequently charged with persistently importuning men for immoral purposes – the subject of Plague Over England.
The 1955 Broadway production of A Day by the Sea was directed by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and starred Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. It has also been produced for BBC Radio with Sir Michael Hordern, Richard Pasco and Barbara Leigh Hunt.
Hunter (1908-1971), who has been called ‘the English Chekhov’, was one of the West End’s most successful playwrights during the 1950s. His other plays include Waters of the Moon, A Picture of Autumn, A Touch of the Sun for which Sir Michael Redgrave received a 1958 Actor of the Year Award, and The Tulip Tree which starred Celia Johnson, John Clements and Lynn Redgrave in her West End début.
The new production is directed by Tom Cooper whose previous work at Finborough includes the sell-out European premiere production of Adam Guettel’s song cycle Myths and Hymns. His other directing credits include Brecht’s rarely performed The Visions of Simone Machard (Hackney Empire and on tour); Michael Ayers’ Dead Woman’s Music (Arcola Theatre); Howard Barker’s Judith (Pleasance Theatre); as well as L’Antologia di Spoon River for the Rapallo Festival in Italy and his own adaptation of The Trojan Women at the Edinburgh Festival.
A Day by the Sea is presented by Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre in association with Oystercatcher; and designed by Mike Lees.
Tickets: £13, £9 concessions.
Time: 7:30pm.
Performance Length: Approximately 2 hours.
For more information and tickets call the box office on 0844 847 1652 or visit the website.
Plague Over England runs from February 27 to March 22, 2008.
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