Productions
The first production of Forty Years On opened at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue on 31 October 1968, and was an immediate success. The school's headmaster was played by John Gielgud; Paul Eddington was Franklin and Alan Bennett played Tempest. The full cast was:
- Bottomley – Stephen Leigh
- Cartwright – Andrew Branch
- Charteris – Freddie Foot
- Crabtree – Colin Reese
- Dishforth – Peter Kinley
- Foster – William Burleigh
- Franklin – Paul Eddington
- Gillings – Dickie Harris
- Headmaster – John Gielgud
- Jarvis – Stephen Price
- Leadbetter – Paul Guess
- Lord – Robert Langley
- Macilwaine – Keith McNally
- Matron – Dorothy Reynolds
- Miss Nisbitt – Nora Nicholson
- Moss – Mark Hughes
- Organist – Carl Davis
- Rumbold – Merlin Ward
- Salter – Denis McGrath
- Skinner – Anthony Andrews
- Spooner – Roger Brain
- Tempest – Alan Bennett
- The Lectern Reader – Robert Swann
- Tredgold – George Fenton
- Tupper – Alan Warren
- Wigglesworth – Thomas Cockrell
- Wimpenny – Philip Chappell
The play was directed by Patrick Garland. Gielgud was succeeded as the Headmaster by Emlyn Williams for the last three months of the run. The play ran until 22 November 1969.
In 1984 Forty Years On was revived at Chichester Festival Theatre again directed by Garland. Eddington now played the role of the headmaster; the critic Michael Billington described his performance as "wonderfully funny … Eddington, escaping from the long shadow cast by Gielgud, makes the part his own". John Fortune played Franklin, Stephen Fry Tempest, and Annette Crosbie Matron. The production transferred to the West End, opening at the Queen's Theatre in August 1984.
Bennett himself played the headmaster in a BBC Radio 4 production in 2000, in a cast that included Robert Bathurst as Franklin and Eleanor Bron as Matron.
Read more about this topic: Forty Years On (play)
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