The Tower Theatre Company is set to present Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path from April 30 to May 10 at the Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington.
Set during the Second World War, the play tells the story of Patricia, who is reunited with her RAF pilot husband but then shocked by the unexpected return of her movie star lover.
As Bomber Command issues orders for a perilous mission over Germany, she is left in a state of anxious anticipation, but must also choose between duty to her husband and lingering desire for her former lover.
Rattigan wrote Flare Path while he was in West Africa as London suffered the turmoil of the Blitz. It was first staged at London’s Apollo Theatre in 1942.
A revival in 2011 at the Haymarket, featuring Sienna Miller and Sheridan Smith, garnered a four-star review from The Guardian’s Michael Billington.
He commented, “Rattigan’s plays are an attack on the English vice of emotional containment… it is precisely that embarrassed English emotional hesitancy that makes this play so overwhelmingly moving.”
The production is set to coincide with VE Day on May 8.
It is directed by Dom Ward, who has worked with the Tower Theatre since 2001 in a range of productions from Victorian ghost stories to classic farce.
