Terence Rattigan’s lost Tale brought to life years after Gielgud blow

 
22 July 2013

A play by Terence Rattigan and the late Sir John Gielgud is to receive its professional world premiere in London — nearly 80 years after it was written.

The TheatreUpClose company will present the Rattigan/Gielgud adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens after persuading the writer’s estate to let them present the work.

The version was written in 1935 before Rattigan made his name with hits such as The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea. Gielgud, who was famous as an actor and director but not known for writing, met and befriended Rattigan when he was still at Oxford.

But on the verge of the play’s premiere, Gielgud pulled the show after a veteran actor who had been performing his own Tale for decades pleaded the new one threatened him with ruin.

Rattigan was so wounded by what happened that he never published the work and there has been only one school production and a radio version since. But director Adam Spreadbury-Maher tracked the script down.

He said: “Rattigan was a novice who had only had one production. He was looking for an opportunity to cement his reputation and it was ripped from his hands very cruelly by Gielgud.”

Rattigan’s biographer Michael Darlow said it was apt the premiere would be at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington where late in life the playwright, ill with cancer and long unfashionable, saw a production of The Browning Version: “It was emotionally very important to him. He realised that maybe his writing would survive his death.”

Alan Brodie, who represents the Rattigan estate, said he was “thrilled” that the work was to be seen: “It’s a young person’s take on A Tale of Two Cities but it’s extremely skilfully done.”

Stewart Agnew will play the Gielgud role of barrister Sydney Carton. A cast of eight play 35 roles in the saga set in Paris and London during the French Revolution.

September 25 to October 19. kingsheadtheatre.com

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