The Browning Version

Synopsis

Anna Chancellor and Nicholas Farrell will once again lead the casts in these plays which examine life in boarding public schools. Rattigan's own Harrow School and Hare's own Lancing College provide the backdrop for two moving and resounding stories, one told through the eyes of a master and one told through the eyes of a boy. Both revolve around unexpected acts of kindness which place the harsh and at times cruel worlds of these schools into stark contrast.

South Downs is set at Lancing College in Sussex where a pin sharp young pupil (a role reprised by young actor Alex Lawther, celebrated for this professional debut) is cut off from the rest of the school by virtue of his own intellect, background and questioning spirit. The school in response presents an unyielding and rigid outlook on life that leaves the boy isolated and confused. In an unlikely meeting with the mother of another pupil, her generosity of spirit and sound advice present the boy with a world of kindness and possibility.

Rattigan's The Browning Version presents the retiring Classics master Mr Crocker-Harris, tired, dried up and an abhorred tyrant over his pupils. Stuck in a broken marriage and facing the prospect of a retirement with no money, a simple act of generosity by one of Crocker-Harris' pupils brings out the deep-rooted dignity and heartbreaking sadness that give this play its power.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 25 April 2012

The arrival in the West End of David Hare’s tremendous new play South Downs on a double-bill with Terence Rattigan’s classic The Browning Version from last year’s Chichester Festival Theatre season marks a special moment in the history of the school play.

In the first, Hare charts the emergence into self-expression and the possibility of a kind of fulfilment of a clever but unhappy schoolboy, John Blakemore, in the early 1960s. In the second, dating from 1948, Rattigan sounds not dissimilar notes of courage and confidence in the predicament of a discarded schoolmaster, Andrew Crocker-Harris, unexpectedly surprised by a pupil’s gift.

Both plays are set in English public schools (Hare went to Lancing College in Sussex, Rattigan to Harrow) and share a brilliant, adaptable brown-panelled design by Tom Scutt that can allow the fluidity of Hare’s play in contrast to the rigid sitting room of the Crocker-Harris̵...

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Latest User Review

steveatplays - 23 May 2012:

These two plays both feature an oddball mocked by others in school situations. But whereas both plays are quite excellent, I was unmoved by the plight of the first oddball, a boy of genius who doesn't fit in, who's know-it-all arrogance made him almost deserving of his treatment. On the other hand, Nicholas Farrell gives his best ever performance in the Rattigan, his oddball teacher wrenching massive sympathy from me, as well as a good deal of empathy. My admiration for Rattigan lately has risen and risen and continues to rise....

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