by E F BENSON

June 28 - 29

A FULLY STAGED PLAY-READING

Redoubtable spinster, Miss Elizabeth Mapp, has reigned supreme as social queen of Tilling - a picturesque seaside town on England’s south coast.  Mrs Emmeline Lucas (”Lucia” to her friends) has done the same in her village in the Cotswolds.  When Lucia decides to spend her summer renting Miss Mapp’s house in Tilling, the sparks begin to fly, and the quaint local residents are in for a hysterically funny battle-royal for social supremacy. 

Edward Frederick Benson was the son of Queen Victoria’s Archbishop of Canterbury.  He was also a prolific author of historical biographies and ghost stories.  But he is, nowadays, best-remembered for his hilariously biting social satires, of which his six novels about Mapp and Lucia are the most enduring.

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by R C SHERRIFF

July 19 - 27

The setting is a dugout in the front-line trenches of France in March 1918 - on the eve of the great German “Spring Offensive”.  Second Lieutenant Jimmy Raleigh - a new 18-year-old recruit, fresh out of an English public school - joins the besieged company of his friend and cricketing hero, Captain Dennis Stanhope.  Initially delighted, the idealistic Raleigh finds his old idol dramatically changed.

R C Sherriff was an insurance clerk, who bcame a young infantry officer, and served for 10 months in the Western Front, before being invalided home, where he began writing plays.  “Journey’s End” became the most famous play ever written about WW1, and its first production, in 1928, starred the young Laurence Olivier.

by TERENCE RATTIGAN

November 29 - December 7

Hester Collyer, the wife of a High Court judge, has run away from her husband, and been living with an ex-World War 2 and Battle of Britain fighter pilot.  The play opens with her being found, after having tried, unsuccessfully, to gas herself, and follows her through the day, as she, and the various people in her life, attempt to pick up the pieces.  It is a powerful account of lives blighted by love - or the lack of it.

First produced in 1952, when Rattigan was at the height of his powers, “The Deep Blue Sea” is considered to be his best play.  In recent years, Rattigan has been “rediscovered”, and recognised for the great playwright that he is.  The 2016 National Theatre revival starred Helen McCrory.

by DONALD MARGULIES

April 8 - 15

Ruth Steiner (in the autumn of her career) is a teacher, and respected, much-published, writer of short stories.  One afternoon, she is visited by Lisa Morrison - an anxious, bright young thing, ready to storm the book-world barricades - and who soon becomes her protégée.  Over the course of six years, as their friendship blossoms and develops, Lisa journeys from insecure student to successful writer. 

After publishing a well-received collection of short stories, Lisa writes a novel, based on Ruth’s affair with a famous poet.  Unsurprisingly, Ruth is outraged by this betrayal.  The two women then have to deal with the dilemma of whether a person’s life events are suitable for another to use in their own creative processes.

David Margulies is a professor at Yale University, and the author of “Dinner With Friends”, “Time Stands Still”, “Brooklyn Boy” and “Sight Unseen”.  “Collected Stories” has been successfully produced all over the world.  Ruth Cracknell played Ruth in an Australian production, which toured to Adelaide.  The London production starred Helen Mirren and Ann-Marie Duff.