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Book Review – The Holiday Game by Mihail Sebastian (translated by Marina Sofia)

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , , , , on July 8, 2025| 2 Comments »

I discovered ‘The Holiday Game‘ by Mihail Sebastian through Marina’s recommendation. The play was originally written in Romanian and Marina was kind enough to share her translation of the play. (Thank you, Marina 😊)

A few people are holidaying in a mountain chalet. It is the year 1936. At one point, strange things start happening. The telephone stops working, the radio stops working, the newspaper doesn’t come anymore, the post doesn’t come anymore, and the bus doesn’t stop anymore. As you might have guessed, it appears that the chalet and the people there are cut off from the outside world. It feels like the beginning of an Agatha Christie novel or play. We soon start expecting strange things to happen. Probably there will be a snowstorm and people will start dropping dead and a murderer will be loose among the chalet-mates. But what actually happens is very different and unexpected and it is very interesting. And it is very different from any Agatha Christie novel or play.

‘The Holiday Game’ is a beautiful study of the conflict between the buzz of the real world and our yearning for a quieter time and place. Though this play is set in 1936, it is very relevant to our world today. Though much has changed today – we have television and telephone and planes and the internet and smartphones and social media – the timeless yearning for a quieter time in the middle of our chaotic world hasn’t changed. And this play beautifully captures that.

My favourite parts of the play were the scenes in which two of the main characters Ştefan Valeriu and Corina have a conversation. Those scenes were very beautiful, especially the first long conversation that they have. I want to quote the whole conversation in full here, but I don’t want to reveal any spoilers and so I won’t. I’ll share a couple of excerpts here so that you can experience the beauty of that conversation.

“You see, you were right when you said earlier that I am a nice man. Yes. Eleven months a year, I am. But I have one month of freedom – and there is only one supreme form of freedom – that of being idle. So I have one month of idleness. From the 1st to the 31st of August. And I do all I can so as not to lose it. You are agitated, talk, repair telephones, move constantly, in a state of perpetual anticipation. While I sit, watch, am silent and don’t anticipate anything. If only you knew how wonderful it is not to expect anything. Eleven months a year I too am a busy person, tightly wound up, running about, discussing, resisting, but after eleven months, I go somewhere far away from the city and I take lessons in idleness. From this rock, or from that tree. Look at it. Don’t you feel there is something majestic about its indifference? I’ve always felt somewhat humbled when I stand next to a tree. Its lack of movement…”

“I’ve only been here five days and I’m fed up with it. Change it. Forget it. But no, you cannot forget. None of you here – none of you know how to forget. You feel faint if you forget for three seconds what day it is. That is why that old fruitcake, as soon as he gets up, hasn’t got anything better to do than write the date on the blackboard. 5th of August, 6th of August… You gather round the radio to listen to the exact time. I don’t want to know the exact time. And I don’t need to know what day it is today or tomorrow, or what it was the day before yesterday. What’s today? A sunny day. That’s all I need to know. I feel such pity for you, honestly, when I see you all hanging desperately onto everything you should have left behind at home in Bucharest. In actual fact, you haven’t left anything behind. You’ve brought it all with you in your suitcases : your little tics, your regrets, your smiles, your love affairs. You said: ‘Shall we start afresh with another game?’ Of course I want to do that, but can’t you see that my game is the new one, while yours is forever the same old pathetic game?”

I loved reading ‘The Holiday Game’. It is one of my favourite books of the year. I hope you’ll pick this play and read it and experience its pleasures yourself. Mihail Sebastian has written more plays, some of which are available in English translation. Hoping to read them one of these days.

You can read Marina’s review of the play here.

You can read Marina’s post on Mihail Sebastian here.

Have you read ‘The Holiday Game’? What do you think about it?

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Book Review – French without Tears by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 4, 2025| 6 Comments »

Continuing with the Terence Rattigan reading adventures. Today, I decided to read ‘French without Tears‘.

The story is set in the 1930s. A few young men live in a house in France, where they are learning French. They all want to become diplomats and passing a French exam is important for that, and that is why they’re learning French. There is a young woman who also lives there and more than one young man is in love with her. What happens between these young people during a few days in the summer is told in the story.

On paper, the play looks beautiful. Setting is in France, young people are in love, there is humour, fun, romance, what can be better? But unfortunately, the play didn’t work for me. I understood that it was a comedy, and I could recognize the comic scenes when they came, but they didn’t really make me laugh. It was sad.

‘French without Tears’ was Terence Rattigan’s first big hit. It was first performed when he was twenty-five, and the play’s director couldn’t believe that the playwright was so young. The play ran for a long time and the audience and critics loved it. But for this particular fan, reading it after many years, it didn’t work. It wasn’t bad like ‘Harlequinade’, but it wasn’t great either. Maybe I’m getting old to enjoy a good comedy. I think though that Rattigan is better at serious plots which have deep conversations rather than at comedy. I don’t think comedy is his thing.

So that is seven Terence Rattigan plays, five excellent or very good, two underwhelming. That is still a 71% hit rate, so still very good.

Have you read ‘French without Tears’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Rattigan play?

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Book Review – Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Continuing the Terence Rattigan reading adventures 😊 Today I decided to read his play ‘Separate Tables‘.

‘Separate Tables’ is a collection of two one-act plays, ‘Table by the Window‘ and ‘Table Number Seven‘. The setting is a residential hotel, a hotel with mostly long-time residents, many of them retired. Occasionally a new guest arrives who stays for a short period of time. Both the stories happen in this residential hotel. Most of the characters in the two plays are the same, but the focus is different in the two stories. This can probably be considered as two episodes happening in the same hotel. In the first play, ‘Table by the Window’, a new woman arrives to stay in the hotel. But after a while, it appears that she knows one of the men who is already there, and they seem to know each other in an intimate way. What happened in their past, and how this story evolves in the future is told in the rest of the play. In the second play, ‘Table Number Seven’, a news comes in the paper with surprising revelations about one of the hotel residents. The earthquake this causes and what happens after that forms rest of the story.

I enjoyed reading ‘Separate Tables’. I didn’t love it as much as my three favourite Rattigans, but I did like it. It made me think of Elizabeth Taylor’s novel, ‘Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont‘, where the story happens in a residential hotel. The stories are very different, of course. The lady who manages the residential hotel, Miss Cooper, comes in both the plays, and she is one of my favourite characters in the book. She speaks one of my favourite lines too. We can call ‘Table by the Window’ a kind of a love story, but a complicated one though. There is even a love triangle there. ‘Table Number Seven’ is very different. Will come back to it in a moment. The ending of ‘Table Number Seven’ was fascinating. In the last scene there was pindrop silence, and tension in the air, and the way the gentle people dismantle the bully was beautiful. Spectacular ending.

Now, more about ‘Table Number Seven’. Terence Rattigan was gay. During his time though, it was not possible to put a gay character in a play. The government wouldn’t allow the play to be staged, if someone did that. So there was always speculation that he tried to sneak in scenes in a play which would make sense to a gay person, but which would be heavily masked so that it can pass the censor’s test.  Sometimes people analyzed his plays to find those scenes. We don’t know whether this is true or not. But with respect to ‘Table Number Seven’, a draft of the script was discovered later, in which the main character is gay and that is the central theme of the story. Rattigan appears to have made a second version of the play with this change, but no one knew about this version for many years. This edition has that second version too. With the main character becoming gay, the play becomes more powerful and the hostility of the other characters towards this main character makes more sense. It actually made the play better. It was like the difference between the play and movie versions of Tennessee Williams‘ ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof‘. In the play, the main character is gay, while in the movie he is straight. I watched the movie first, and I couldn’t understand why there is a problem between the husband and the wife, when they love each other. Then I read the play and I realized why. There is something similar in Rattigan’s play.

‘Separate Tables’ seems to have been one of Rattigan’s most successful plays. It ran in West End for two years, and it was made into a movie with a star cast (Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Rita Hayworth – Wow!) which received multiple Oscar nominations and won two Oscars. I’d love to watch that movie.

Sharing one of my favourite parts from the second play ‘Table Number Seven’.

SIBYL. I’m a freak, aren’t I?

MISS COOPER (in matter-of-fact tones). I never know what that word means. If you mean you’re different from other people, then, I suppose, you are a freak. But all human beings are a bit different from each other, aren’t they? What a dull world it would be if they weren’t.

SIBYL. I’d like to be ordinary.

MISS COOPER. I wouldn’t know about that, dear. You see, I’ve never met an ordinary person. To me all people are extraordinary. I meet all sorts here, you know, in my job, and the one thing I’ve learnt in five years is that the word normal, applied to any human being, is utterly meaningless. In a sort of a way it’s an insult to our Maker, don’t you think, to suppose that He could possibly work to any set pattern.

Have you read ‘Separate Tables’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Terence Rattigan play?

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Book Review – The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on March 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Continuing the Terence Rattigan reading adventures 😊 I decided to read his play ‘The Deep Blue Sea‘ today.

There is a building with many apartments. One day in the morning, there is the smell of gas leaking. The caretaker and one of the tenants try to find out where it is coming from and they find the apartment from where the smell is coming. Inside they find the woman who lives in the apartment unconscious. It appears that she has tried to commit suicide. Why she tried doing that, what is her back story, what happens after that, forms the rest of the story.

I loved ‘The Deep Blue Sea’. The first act is spectacular and gripping and grabs your attention and never lets you go. It was like watching a Hitchcock movie. There is a bit of a slack in the second act, but the third act picks up. Towards the end there are fascinating conversations, and some deep lines spoken. I loved the complexity of the main character, Hester, the woman who tries to commit suicide. Another of my favourite characters was Sir William, the judge. A third favourite character was Mr Miller, the doctor.

I think out of the four Terence Rattigan plays I’ve read till now, my favourite is still ‘The Winslow Boy’. But ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ was so good at the beginning that I thought it would upstage ‘The Winslow Boy’. But it didn’t. I’d give it second place alongwith ‘The Browning Version’. Many critics rate ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ as his finest play. Terence Rattigan’s own favourite was ‘The Browning Version’, I think. My favourite is, of course, ‘The Winslow Boy’ 😊

I also think that watching the performance of ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ on stage would be a more powerful experience than reading the play. I normally read plays, because opportunities for watching performances is quite limited in my place, and most good plays are great even if we treat them as a book and read them. But sometimes we forget that plays are written to be performed and there is a huge difference between what is there on the page and what we see on the stage. In some cases, the performance takes the play to a different level. Peggy Ashcroft played the role of Hester when ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ was originally performed on stage, and her performance was acclaimed and praised by everyone. When the play had a revival in the ’90s, Penelope Wilton’s performance as Hester was regarded as brilliant and it was widely praised. (Penelope Wilton played the role of Matthew Crawley’s mother, Isobel Crawley, in ‘Downton Abbey‘). I’d have loved to watch these two performances. But, unfortunately, beggars cannot be choosers, and so I should take what I can get, and so I’m happy that I got to read the play.

Sharing one of my favourite parts from the book.

HESTER (wildly). I know. I know. That’s what I can’t face.

MILLER (with brutal force). Yes, you can. That word ‘never’. Face that and you can face life. Get beyond hope. It’s your only chance.

HESTER. What is there beyond hope?

MILLER. Life. You must believe that. It’s true – I know.

HESTER (at length). You can still find some purpose in living.

MILLER. What purpose?

HESTER. You have your work at the hospital.

MILLER. For me the only purpose in life is to live it. My work at the hospital is a help to me in that. That is all. If you looked perhaps you might also find some help for yourself.

HESTER. What help?

MILLER. Haven’t you got your work too? (He makes a gesture towards the paintings.)

HESTER. Oh that. (Wearily.) There’s no escape for me through that.

MILLER. Not through that, or that. (With a wide gesture he indicates the later paintings.) But perhaps through that. (He points to the early painting.) I’m not an art expert, but I believe there was talent here. Just a spark, that’s all, which with a little feeding, might have become a little flame. Not a great fire, which could have illumined the world – oh no – I’m not saying that. But the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.

Have you read ‘The Deep Blue Sea’? What do you think about it? Which is your favourite Terence Rattigan play?

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Book Review – The Browning Version and Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , , on March 2, 2025| 2 Comments »

After reading ‘The Winslow Boy‘, I thought I’ll read one more play by Terence Rattigan. I picked up this one. This book has two one-act plays, ‘The Browning Version‘ and ‘Harlequinade‘.

The story told in ‘The Browning Version’ goes like this. It is the last day at school for a teacher. He has been at that school for many years but he’s now leaving because of a health condition. He is an accomplished classics scholar, but he is not popular with the students. They find him boring. How much ever he tries sharing his love for Ancient Greek literature with them, it doesn’t work. So it is the evening of the last day. The last classes are over. And then one thing after another starts happening, and one humiliation after another is piled up on our teacher, some to his face, some behind his back. There is an old saying that nice guys finish last. Our teacher is that exact nice guy who finishes last. The play turns darker as the story proceeds, but it takes an interesting turn towards the end, as there are some surprising revelations, and even some beautiful moments. I can’t tell you more. You’ve to read the play to find out what happened.

Terence Rattigan once said that if ‘The Browning Version’ was his passport to heaven, ‘The Winslow Boy’ was the leather wallet which contained it. I now know why. They are two of his finest plays.

I loved reading ‘The Browning Version’. It was very different from ‘The Winslow Boy’, a bit more dark, but beautiful in its own way.

I want to share some of my favourite passages from the play, and there are some beautiful, powerful ones towards the end, but they are filled with spoilers and so I won’t put them here. Hope you read the play and enjoy those revelations yourself.

The second play in the book, ‘Harlequinade’, the less said about this the better. When I love a book by a writer, I am always worried when I pick another book by that writer. What happens if this new one is not good? What happens if it is disappointing? And the more hits we read, that apprehension just keeps looming larger, and we know that a flop is around the corner. No one can create one hit after another. Somewhere they are going to slip. And this is what happened in ‘Harlequinade’. Till halfway through the play it was underwhelming and disappointing. Then Terence Rattigan decides to wake up and introduces a twist in the tale, and suddenly we also wake up and try to see where that twist leads us, but after a while, the play slips back into underwhelming territory, and even that major surprise and revelation is not enough to save the play. It was very disappointing. After reading two exceptional plays, I was disappointed that the third one was a flop.

But a hit rate of two out of three is exceptional and I’ll take that. I’ll regard ‘Harlequinade’ as an exception and will continue to explore Terence Rattigan’s work.

Have you read ‘The Browning Version’? What to you think about it? What about ‘Harlequinade’?

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Book Review – The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan

Posted in Book Review, Plays, tagged , , , on February 28, 2025| 2 Comments »

I first discovered ‘The Winslow Boy‘ by Terence Rattigan when I was a student. It was the prescribed play for our English language class. I picked it up and read it during the first few days of the semester. I loved it. I’d never heard of Terence Rattigan before. I wondered who this playwright was, who wrote such a beautiful play. Even my sister, who majored in literature, hadn’t heard of him. I thought that one day, when I grow older and become more mature, I’ll come back and read ‘The Winslow Boy’ again. I also thought that I’ll look for more Terence Rattigan plays. They were hard to find and I gave up. Yesterday, I felt that the time has come to read ‘The Winslow Boy’ again. I’m older, hopefully more mature, and my literary taste has evolved. So why not?

The story told in ‘The Winslow Boy’ goes like this. A young cadet is expelled from the naval academy for a small theft. He says that he is innocent. His family believes him. His family decides to go to war against the establishment, against the admiralty, to prove his innocence. What happens after that forms the rest of the story.

‘The Winslow Boy’ is the story of a little man who is wronged, and who goes to war against the establishment to get justice. How can we not like this story? It is stirring, it is inspiring. I liked it the first time I read it, I liked it even more this time. The dialogue, the cool lines, the humour, the drama, the romance, the deep conversations, it was all beautiful. I’m not sure I understood some of the subtext when I was younger, but I understood it now. The way the family goes through lots of challenges and have to make sacrifices in their pursuit of justice, when sometimes it all looks hopeless, this is all beautifully depicted. ‘The Winslow Boy’ was inspired by a real-life story which happened. So in a way, it is a theatrical adaptation of history. It makes the story even more interesting.

Terence Rattigan was one of the great British playwrights of the 20th century. From the middle ’40s till the middle ’50s, he was probably the pre-eminent British playwright, with many of his plays running for more than a year in London’s West End, and sometimes multiple plays of his running at the same time. But sometime in the ’50s, and definitely in the ’60s, he lost favour among the critics and reviewers and even theatre fans. It was the era when a new kind of play started coming out, which had no story, no plot, or if it had one, it was difficult to understand. For some reason, this no-story-difficult-to-understand play succeeded and most playwrights started writing this way. Terence Rattigan was probably one of the last of the traditional playwrights who wrote a play with a solid plot, and well sculpted characters, and beautiful dialogue. These new playwrights dispensed with all this, and for reasons which defy logic, found success. I don’t know why people hate good stuff. Terence Rattigan was knighted in the early ’70s for his services to theatre, and there was a revival of his plays in those years. Since then it has been long periods of quiet, with an occasional revival of some of his plays. Today, outside of hardcore theatre enthusiasts and fans and maybe literature students, he seems to be mostly forgotten. It is sad. It is a shame. Because he really wrote beautifully. This particular play, ‘The Winslow Boy’, is one of his finest.

I’m so happy to read ‘The Winslow Boy’. I’m glad that some good Samaritan included it in my college English syllabus, as otherwise I probably wouldn’t have discovered it. Hoping to read more of Terence Rattigan’s plays now.

Sharing one of my favourite conversations from the play. Arthur is the dad and Catherine is the daughter.

ARTHUR. Poor Kate! (Pause. He takes her hand slowly.) How I’ve messed up your life, haven’t I?

CATHERINE. No, Father. Any messing-up that’s been done has been done by me.

ARTHUR. I’m so sorry, Kate. I’m so sorry.

CATHERINE. Don’t be, Father. We both knew what we were doing.

ARTHUR. Did we?

CATHERINE. I think we did.

ARTHUR. Yet our motives seem to have been different all along – yours and mine, Kate? Can we both have been right?

CATHERINE. I believe we can. I believe we have been.

ARTHUR. And yet they’ve always been so infernally logical, our opponents, haven’t they?

CATHERINE. I’m afraid logic has never been on our side.

ARTHUR. Brute stubbornness – a selfish refusal to admit defeat. That’s what your mother thinks have been our motives –

CATHERINE. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps that’s all they’ve been.

ARTHUR. But perhaps brute stubbornness isn’t such a bad quality in the face of injustice?

CATHERINE. Or in the face of tyranny. (Pause.) If you could go back, Father, and choose again – would your choice be different?

ARTHUR. Perhaps.

CATHERINE. I don’t think so.

ARTHUR. I don’t think so, either.

CATHERINE. I still say we both knew what we were doing. And we were right to do it.

(ARTHUR kisses the top of her head.)

ARTHUR. Dear Kate. Thank you.

Read this for #ReadIndies hosted by Kaggsy (from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Lizzy (from Lizzy’s Literary Life) which is an event which runs through the whole of February and which celebrates independent publishers. ‘The Winslow Boy’ is published by Nick Hern Books, an independent publisher based out of the UK, which specializes in plays and books on the theatre.

Have you heard of Terence Rattigan? Have you read ‘The Winslow Boy’? What do you think about it?

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