About the Play:

Harlequinade is a one-act farce by Terence Rattigan. A man who is preparing to play Romeo opposite his wife's Juliet in the English countryside learns that he is still married to a previous wife, with whom he has a daughter who now has a child of her own.

Harlequinade follows a classical theatre company whose members intrigues and dalliances are accidentally revealed with increasingly calamitous consequences in an affectionate celebration of the lunatic art of putting on a play. One of two Shakespearean ham actors touring the provinces has a dubious and shady past. Arthur and Edna Gosport are opening a Shakespearian tour to produce The Winter's Tale and Romeo and Juliet. During the dress rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet, a pallid spectre turns up out of Arthur's past, claiming to be his daughter. In a few moments before the curtain rises, the harassed Arthur makes wild attempts to solve this imbroglio.

Harlequinade premiered in 1948 at the Phoenix Theatre jn London, along with The Browning Version in a double-bill under the joint title, Playbill. This same double-bill was presented on Broadway at the Coronet Theater.

Cast: 5 women, 9 men

About the Author:

Sir Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was a popular English dramatist who wrote some of the most memorable and important plays of the twentieth century. His plays are generally situated within an upper-middle-class background. He was that relative rarity among the ranks of playwrights: a major theatre author who was almost equally successful as a screenwriter, and one of a very few playwrights of his era privileged to adapt his own stage work to the screen on a regular basis.