A moving story of love and loyalty, courage and fear, based on Terence Rattigan’s own experiences as a tail gunner in the Second World War.
1942. The Falcon Hotel, on the Lincolnshire coast. RAF bomber pilot Teddy is celebrating a reunion with his actress wife Patricia. When Peter, Patricia’s ex-lover and Hollywood heart-throb, arrives and an urgent bombing mission over Germany is ordered, Patricia finds herself at the centre of an emotional conflict as unpredictable as the war in the skies.
Terence Rattigan’s play Flare Path was first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, in August 1942. It was revived as part of the Rattigan Centenary celebrations at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in March 2011.
This edition contains an authoritative introduction by Rattigan scholar Dan Rebellato.
‘A deeply moving portrait of people at war’
— Guardian
‘A three-handkerchief weepie that somehow manages to be both profoundly moving and wonderfully funny’
— Telegraph
‘Classic Rattigan: undemonstrative emotional catharsis… be dragged with power, humour and truth out of whining modernity into a mindset where duty trumps desire’
— The Times
‘Devastating and uplifting’
— Evening Standard
‘Tender, funny and overwhelmingly moving’
— Arts Desk
‘Rattigan’s insightful characteriations create a multilayered view of war and what it does to people’
— Hollywood Reporter
