Separate Tables is a vital portrait of postwar Britain in flux. Here, in a small, shabby hotel in Bournemouth, a brutal clash of generations is playing out. Beneath a veneer of respectability lies a modern world of desire, deception and violence.

Separate Tables comprises two linked one-act plays: Table By The Window and Table Number Seven. In this play, Table Number Seven, a newspaper reveals Major Pollock’s long-held secret. Will the other residents cast him out for good?

CAST
Major Pollock ..... Adrian Scarborough
Sibyl Railton-Bell ..... Chloe Pirrie
Mrs Railton-Bell ..... Susan Brown
Miss Cooper ..... Nathalie Armin
Lady Matheson ..... Ruth Everett
Mabel ..... Alexandra Hannant
Charles ..... Matthew Durkan
Jean ..... Marilyn Nnadebe
Miss Meacham ..... Rebecca Crankshaw
Mr Fowler ..... Neil McCaul

Written by Terence Rattigan
Directed by Anne Isger
Sound by Keith Graham, Mike Etherden, Ali Craig, Anne Bunting
Production Co-ordination by Gaelan Connolly and Clare Ewing
A BBC Audio Production for BBC Radio 4

A note on the play: This drama uses the ‘alternative version’ of Rattigan's text, which was only discovered after Rattigan’s death, and never performed during his lifetime. In this version, the Major’s ‘crime’ is one of homosexuality, whereas in the originally performed version, the Major was accused of assaulting women. It’s generally accepted that the avoidance of reference to homosexuality was as a result of censorship of theatres imposed by the Lord Chamberlain at the time. Rattigan himself said ‘I had in fact appealed over the head of the Lord Chamberlain to the sensibilities and particular awareness of an English audience. I was in fact saying to them “Look, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Lord Chamberlain has forced me into an evasion, but you and I will foil him. Everybody in the play is going to behave as if there were no evasion at all and as if the more important and serious theme were still the issue.”’ Show less