Winslow Times

WINSLOW TIMES FEB 2018 ISSUE

EXCLUSIVE GLIMPSE INTO THE REHEARSAL ROOM OF A MAJOR NEW REVIVAL READ MORE ABOUT

‘RATTIGAN’S BEST WORK’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

TESSA PEAKE-JONES

ON HER FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE FESTIVAL STAGE

ADEN GILLETT

ON THE ENDURING APPEAL OF THE WINSLOW BOY

ALL THIS AND MORE AT

MEET THE CAST Take a sneak peek into the rehearsal room as the cast take on a major new revival of Rattigan’s classic drama

Director Rachel Kavanaugh and the cast

Aden Gillett

Sarah Lambie, Theo Bamber, Misha Butler and Oscar Morgan 2 WINSLOW TIMES

Tessa Peake-Jones

Timothy Watson

Aden Gillett, Tessa Peake-Jones, Misha Butler and Timothy Watson

Aden Gillett is best known for playing Jack Maddox in The House of Elliot. He talks to Winslow Times about taking on the role of Arthur Winslow.

FROM GRANTCHESTER TO CHICHESTER For Tessa Peake-Jones – known to TV audiences of millions as Mrs Maguire in Grantchester and Raquel in Only Fools and Horses - The Winslow Boy marks her first appearance at the Festival Theatre, as well as her return to theatrical touring after nearly 30 years spent bringing up a family. Winslow Times caught up with her as she headed to rehearsals.

Based on a true story from the Edwardian era of a cadet expelled from naval college after being accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order, The Winslow Boy follows his father’s determination to clear his son’s name at all costs.

Tessa plays Grace Winslow, the mother who must watch as her family is torn apart by their own principled stand. Written in 1946, the play’s themes of miscarriage of justice, social disgrace and personal integrity seem as pertinent as ever.

‘It’s what I would call a heroic play’, Tessa says. ‘It’s moral and decent and good. It’s all the things I would relate to, as a family member and a mum myself. It takes you back to a time when people weighed up right and wrong.

‘The fact that this family said we are going to take this case to the very last, to lose every penny, to prove as a principle that this boy has not been

served well by the system – you want to cheer it! Although there are strains within the family, of course. My character, Grace, is a wife and mother; she asks whether it is all worth it or should they just keep quiet and trust that the scandal will get forgotten.

‘Rattigan is so clever in the way he builds up the suspense.

Hopefully the audience will go through the play wondering – did he do it, didn’t he? Is he going to get off, isn’t he? Is the family going to be destroyed?’

The Winslow Boy has retained its power and appeal throughout the years, even when Rattigan’s ‘drawingroom’ reputation suffered a dip.

‘It’s funny how things take their turn; it’s like fashion’, reflects Tessa. ‘At the moment I’m ordering a record player which I last used in my 20s. It’s the digital age, but now people are saying “there’s nothing like the quality of vinyl”.

Everything has its day, then comes back and has another day.’

One sitcom which has never gone out of fashion is Only Fools and Horses, in which Tessa starred alongside David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst for 15 years. Some actors might regard it as a mixed blessing to be forever associated with one role, but Tessa has no misgivings.

‘How privileged we all are to be in a programme that gave such pleasure to 24 million people regularly. I loved being part of it. I’m so amazed still to get letters from new generations watching it on UK Gold.

‘The characters might be dodgy in their dealings but they are kind and have heart.

That travels though time. It’s for everyone in the family, of whatever age or class.

It’s universal.’

“This is the second time I’ve been involved with The Winslow Boy. 20 years ago, I was in the David Mamet film of it.

Based on a real incident that took place in 1908, it’s a masterpiece. A belter. And now, I’m playing the old boy, Arthur Winslow: the dad, who takes on the might of the British Establishment, in order to clear his son’s name. It’ll be interesting being that bloodyminded, that reckless, that noble even. This feels like a particularly good time in history to enjoy the victory of the little man over his own, cold, brutally indifferent, government. It doesn’t all end happily. It’s based on a true story after all.

But you will, hopefully, have your faith in humanity restored, just a smidgen. And that seems a thoroughly worthwhile goal.”

From The Archers to CFT, Timothy Watson takes on the role of barrister Sir Robert Morton.

He captured the collective hatred of the nation as Rob Titchener in Radio 4’s The Archers and now takes to the Festival stage as the barrister who comes to the defence of Navel Cadet Ronnie Winslow.

WINSLOW TIMES 3

TERENCE RATTIGAN

Terence Rattigan is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest playwrights. His play about the life of T.E. Lawrence, Ross, received rave reviews during its revival in Festival 2016. century, the persistent merits of Rattigan’s plays have been increasingly acknowledged by a new generation, who have rediscovered them as profound portraits of aching emotional longing.

The plays that have been most celebrated in recent years have been the more apparently domestic ones. The Deep Blue Sea (1952) set in its dingy West London apartment; Separate Tables (1954) in a south-coast boarding house; After the Dance (1939) in a fashionable London flat; The Browning

Version (1948) in the CrockerHarris’s cramped teaching quarters. These locations might encourage us to see Rattigan as an unmistakably domestic writer, whose interior locations take us on journeys to their characters’ own interiors.

Certainly there’s some merit to that claim.

But we should not forget how carefully Rattigan places the action of these plays against a wider, even epic canvas.

In the post-war period, Rattigan turned his attention to historical subjects, again affording him

THE WINSLOW BOY

Having been expelled from the Royal Naval College for stealing a five-shilling postal order, young cadet Ronnie Winslow’s entire family are pulled apart by the repercussions of this charge. Set against the values of 1910 Edwardian London, the Winslow family fight to clear his name or face social ostracism as the case becomes a national scandal.

Based on a real-life event, The Winslow Boy is a courageous and often delicately humorous window into the class and political hypocrisy of the time. This gripping masterpiece is a highlycharged moral drama that will have you gripped by the heart-tugging decisions facing each member of the Winslow family. Where will their sacrifices leave them and what is really at stake?

8 – 17 February Mon – Sat eves 7.30pm Thu & Sat mats 2.30pm

4 WINSLOW TIMES

a broader perspective in which grand themes of the individual in society could emerge. The first of these was The Winslow Boy (1946), set in 1910, pitting the legal and military authority of the Admiralty against a mere boy, with its famous cry for justice: ‘Let right be done’.

DAN REBELLATO Dan Rebellato is a playwright and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London. This is an edited version of his programme article for Ross in Festival 2016.

cft.org.uk 01243 781312 Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park Chichester, West Sussex PO19 6AP

Illustration by Andy Briggs. With thanks to The Terence Rattigan Society.

Many people in the mid-1930s thought Terence Rattigan might save the theatre. French Without Tears (1936), his first major success, was a comedy of unusual youth and freshness and established a reputation which remained high until the mid-1950s. Rattigan suffered an eclipse after Look Back in Anger (1956) and the rise of the Angry Young Men. He was now a figure of mockery, with critics and commentators dismissing him as a relic of a happilyforgotten generation.

But over the last quarter-