About the Play:

The Browning Version was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

The Browning Version is a one-act drama by Terence Rattigan. An aging British schoolteacher prepares to end his career without a pension, in addition to coping with the understanding that his wife is being unfaithful with a younger teacher. Into a callous and fatalistic world, suffused with melancholy, comes an act of kindness that signals the possibility of hope – if not redemption.

The Browning Version is an exquisite mini-tragedy about a retiring classics master disregarded by his school and loathed by his pupils. Andrew Crocker-Harris' wife Millie has become embittered and fatigued by her husband's lack of passion and ambition. On the verge of retirement, and divorce, Andrew is forced to come to terms with the platitude his life has become. Then John Taplow, a previously unnoticed pupil, gives Andrew an unexpected parting gift: a second-hand copy of Robert Browning's translation of Agamemnon – a gift which offers not only an opportunity for redemption, but the chance to gain back some dignity.

This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology. It also contains A Harlequinade, a farce about a touring theatre troupe, written to accompany The Browning Version in a double-bill. (Cast: 5 women, 9 men)

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

Cast: 2 women and 5 men

What people say:

"A masterpiece." — New York Journal American

"…the cruel inequalities of love always absorbed Rattigan; not least here – this is a play that has not dated." — The Times

About the Playwright:

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.