About

Honesty between people who love each other is the thing that matters least in this life.

England, 1973. Estonian refugee Lydia and her Marxist literary critic husband Sebastian both worked in wartime intelligence. They excel at keeping secrets – from friends, from each other, and even from themselves. But their world is crumbling.

The arrival of Lydia’s admirer, a best-selling American author, sparks their complex deceptions into an explosion of family truths.

A perceptive and deeply moving drama, In Praise of Love is Rattigan’s penultimate play, and loosely based on the relationship between the actor Rex Harrison and his wife Kay Kendall.

Orange Tree audiences loved Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears and While the Sun Shines. This is a rare chance to see a haunting and provocative play by one of the twentieth century’s most popular playwrights.

“The most piercing exposition of love under great stress I have ever seen on the stage.” Harold Hobson, Sunday Times on In Praise of Love

“Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan.” Michael Billington