The Family Reunion

Summary

1950 BBC live studio production of T. S. Eliot’s family drama, The Family Reunion, written mostly in blank verse.

Theatre play

The Family Reunion by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) [more information]

Play synopsis

Written mostly in blank verse, the play is set in Wishwood, a stately home in the north of England. At the beginning, the family of Amy, Dowager Lady Monchensey are assembling for her birthday party. She is, as her doctor later explains, clinging on to life by sheer willpower. Lady Monchensey’s two brothers-in-law and three sisters are present, and a younger relation, Mary, but none of Lady Monchensey’s three sons. Among other things they discuss the sudden, and not to them wholly unwelcome, death at sea of the wife of the eldest son Harry, the present Lord Monchensey. Neither of the younger sons ever appears, both being slightly injured in motoring accidents, but Harry soon arrives, his first appearance at Wishwood for eight years. He is haunted by the belief that he pushed his wife off the ship. In fact Harry has an alibi for the time, but whether he killed her or not he wished her dead and his feelings of guilt are the driving force in the rest of the play. (Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_Reunion; accessed 7 September 1939.)

Production history

First performed on 21 March 1939 at the Westminster Theatre, London.

Date of transmission

Sunday 19 February 1950

Channel

BBC Television

Credits

Producer

Stephen Harrison

Playwright

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Music

John Hotchkis

Sets / Settings

Stephen Bundy

Drawings by

John Piper ('the exterior [of the country house] specially drawn by’)

Cast

George Bishop	Dr Warburton
Kathleen Boutall	Ivy
John Burch	Col. the Hon. Gerald Piper
Christopher Hodge	Sergeant Winchell
Catherine Lacey	Agatha
David Markham	Harry
Marie Ney	Amy, the Dowager Lady Monchensey
Ronald Simpson	The Hon. Charles Piper
Jessica Spencer	Mary
Helen Stirling	Denman
Eileen Thorndike	Violet
Patrick Troughton	Downing

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Later transmissions

Presented again at 8.30pm on Friday 24 February 1950.

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

north of England, as theme or setting; verse drama

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 17 February 1950 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing, p. 46; article by Lionel Hale, ‘Not So Happy Families’, p. 45