BUT IT STILL GOES ON To Make World Premiere at Finborough Theatre

In a production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre, a world premiere from the author of Goodbye To All That and I Claudius, Robert Graves' "post-catastrophic comedy", But It Still Goes On, directed by Fidelis Morgan, opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four-week limited season on Tuesday, 10 July 2018 (Press Nights: Thursday, 12 July 2018 and Friday, 13 July 2018 at 7.30pm) as part of the Finborough Theatre's THEGREATWAR100 series commemorating the centenary of the First World War.

London 1932. Cecil Tompion, a popular writer, has bullied his children for most of their lives. Now, his son, an ex-army officer who survived the trenches of the Western Front, and his daughter, a doctor, are trying to break free. Their lives touched by another ex-soldier, David, and close friend Charlotte, who both desperately struggle to repress their homosexuality.

The generation that survived a war, have to confront who they really are when they discover that family is just another battlefield.

This unique rediscovery, never previously performed, But It Still Goes On by poet and novelist Robert Graves was written in 1929 as a commission from the producers of Journey's End. Influenced by the drawing room comedies of Noël Coward and W. Somerset Maugham, it explores themes of adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, gender politics, casual sex, and inter-generational conflict, but with a surreal dark twist. It now finally receives its long overdue world premiere at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre.

Playwright Robert Graves (1895-1985) enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War, aged 19, and served as a Captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers with the poet, Siegfried Sassoon, with whom he remained close friends and whom he reportedly used as an inspiration for one of the characters in But It Still Goes On. He is best known today for his acclaimed war poetry, his classic memoir Goodbye To All That (1929), and his best-selling historical novels I Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934) which were dramatised by the BBC in the 1970s. From 1929, he spent much of his life in Majorca, Spain, producing over 140 books (biography, novels, anthropology, myths, biblical studies) and was universally recognised as one of the leading writers of his age. Graves lived for many years with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder after his experiences in the First World War.

Director Fidelis Morgan returns to the Finborough Theatre where she has previously directed a sell-out production of Lennox Robinson's Drama At Inish, starring Celia Imrie and Paul O'Grady, and Colleen Murphy's The Piper as part of Vibrant - A Festival of Finborough Playwrights; whilst her adaptation of Hangover Square, based on Patrick Hamilton's novel, was another sell-out and received huge critical acclaim. Fidelis was both player and assistant director at the world-renowned Glasgow Citizens Theatre, has directed classic plays at the major drama schools, and the King's Head Theatre. In 2014 she was Artist-in-Residence at the University of California. On television, Fidelis appeared in Jeeves and Wooster, As Time Goes By and Goodbye to Love, a biopic in which she played the Carpenters' formidable mother, Agnes Carpenter. On stage, Fidelis has played leading roles in classics from Massinger to Coward, Goldoni to Brecht, at theatres such as the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, Nottingham Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Her most recent film role was Anne in A Little Chaos. Her twenty published books include the ground-breaking The Female Wits: Women Playwrights on the London Stage and the Countess Ashby de la Zouche crime novels. She is currently working on another novel set in the late 17th/ early 18th centuries.

Producer Andrew Maunder is Head of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Hertfordshire. His recent books include British Theatre and the Great War 1914-1919 (2016) and R.C. Sherriff's Journey's End, A Guide (2017). He is part of the Centre for Everyday Lives in War, one of four First World War engagement centres funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It is based at the University of Hertfordshire, in collaboration with the Universities of Essex, Northampton, West of England, Lincoln and Central Lancashire. The Centre works with a wide range of community groups on projects studying the impact of war on everyday life between 1914 and 1918 and its longer-term effects.

THEGREATWAR100 series is an occasional series of works about - or written during and in the aftermath - of the Great War presented by the Finborough Theatre to commemorate the centenary of the First World War.

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