“John Matthews, Alison Paine, Yvonne Paulley and Liz Wilson are pitch perfect”
Married for over 30 years, writers Honor and George are apparently fulfilled and satisfied. He is a successful, highly respected journalist, she a contented housewife whose early literary promise has been sidelined by marriage and family life. Into the scene steps Claudia, attractive, intelligent and half George’s age. As her husband succumbs to Claudia’s charms, Honor is caught up in the destructive whirlwind that tears apart her domestic idyll.
Joanna Murray-Smith says: “I wanted to put centre stage a middle-aged woman who has willingly sacrificed her life for marriage and is abandoned at the very point where she should be reaping the rewards of that devotion. It’s a poignant place to be.”
Performed in-the-round, Honour concludes Next Stage’s themed Autumn trilogy of plays by exploring love, desire and loss in one’s mature years. It deals sympathetically with Honor’s devastation, George’s betrayal, their daughter Sophie’s angry bewilderment and Claudia’s duplicity. Honour is not a judgmental play, and with its total realism, taut dialogue and avoidance of cliché, it will hold an audience gripped to the very end.
“A heart-rending, hard-edged, devastating play....It heaves and bursts with a cruel and sensitive intelligence” The Sunday Times
The production is brought to the stage by four outstanding actors familiar to Next Stage audiences: Alison Paine (Honor) and Yvonne Paulley (Sophie) are creating another compelling mother-daughter partnership having appeared together as Mrs Birling and Sheila in An Inspector Calls (2009); John Matthews (George) was Salieri in Amadeus (2009); and Liz Wilson (Claudia) appeared earlier this season as Adriana in The Things Good Men Do (2010). Book early to avoid disappointment.
Cast:
Rehearsal Photographs:
