This is, quite simply, the Best One-Act play ever written, any time, any place; it's a Faberge egg with a Swiss movement and the fact that as I write, June, 2005, a French translation has just picked up a couple of Molieres is indicative of its wider appeal. It was Terence Rattigan who first identified and named the 'English Disease' as repression and he explored it in play after play such as Separate Tables and this one. A consummate scriptwriter as well as a Dramatist Rattigan handled his own adaptation and though he 'opened it out' a little he still maintains the tension and his dramatic skill is evident in every frame. Michael Redgrave is simply magnificent as the repressed Andrew Crocker-Harris, so much so, that he makes the excellent supporting actors, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick, Wilfrid Hyde White, etc seem merely competent. This is a film that cannot be praised too highly
Review of The Browning Version
