ADC Theatre
Separate Tables
9 July
– 13 July 2019
Terence Rattigan
Separate Tables is two inter-linked plays which take place in the Beauregard Private Hotel in Bournemouth in 1954, where the residents have their own reasons for seeking the solace of a quiet life.
Table by the Window focuses on the troubled relationship between a disgraced Labour politician and his ex-wife.
Table Number Seven, set eighteen months after the previous events, deals with the touching friendship between a repressed spinster and a kindly man posing as an upper-class retired army officer.
The foibles and eccentricities of the residents and staff are highlighted as they struggle to come to terms with the changes in post-war British culture. Shock and social disgrace are cleverly interwoven with the decay, furtiveness and fraying of established manners.
For the New York premiere of Table Number Seven, Rattigan wrote a series of alternative passages which would not have been permitted due to the Lord Chamberlain's censorship rules at the time of the London production. These text variants were discovered among Rattigan's papers a few years ago; our production incorporates these changes to reflect Rattigan's original concept for the script.
