Tom Stoppard - 1937 -
Among the most fashionable of contemporary playwrights; "Stoppardian" is now used as a term for the display of verbal wit and intellectual games. Born in Czechoslovakia, he was brought up in Singapore, and moved to England in 1946. His first plays were written for television and radio, including tonight's play If you're Glad I'll be Frank first produced on the BBC Third programme on 8 February 1966, but it was Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead which first brought him attention. Most of Stoppards' plays are constructed around elaborate conceits and are full of verbal fireworks, intellectual references and literary jokes.

Terence Mervyn Rattigan - 1911 - 1977
A master craftsman in plot construction and writing telling dialogue. Rattigan first gained fame with French Without Tears (1936). In the late fifties Rattigan's obvious commercial appeal led enthusiasts of the new generation of more politically motivated dramatists to dismiss his work as irrelevant.
Nevertheless Rattigan, working within the format of the well-made play, tackled issues for deeper than those of conventional Shaftesbury Avenue entertainment, though he presented them with a skill that avoided alienating the respectable middle-class, middle-aged theatre-goer whom he personified as 'Aunt Edna'.
In The Browning Version (1948), he examines the pressure on a teacher being forced into retirement with his unfaithful wife and even a pupil who seems to share his ideals abandoning him.

Performed 1 & 2 March 1996 at Forest Community Centre, Walthamstow