THE SILVER CORD Comes to the Finborough Theatre

In a production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre, the first London production since 1927 of Sidney Howard’s The Silver Cord will open at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 3 September 2024.

Boston, Massachusetts, 1925.  

Wealthy widow, Mrs Phelps, is determined her two grown-up sons, David and Robert, will never leave her. Overbearing, suffocating and clingy, she expects to control every important decision for them. And when both sons announce their intention to get married, Mrs Phelps is determined to put a stop to it. 

When the two young couples arrive at the family home, they come face to face with a mother who in the course of just 24 hours will stop at nothing to ensure she always remains the most important person in her sons’ lives…  

Both a classic comedy of manners and a powerful Freudian insight into motherhood, family dysfunction and power, this production is a major rediscovery of playwright Sidney Howard, one of America’s most renowned dramatists of the first half of the twentieth century, best known today for his Oscar™ winning screenplay for Gone with the Wind (1939). His career was cut short by his tragically early death, his writing was often likened to his friend and contemporary Eugene O’Neill. 

One of the most successful plays of the 1926-27 Broadway season, The Silver Cord was also a huge hit in the West End in 1927 starring Lilian Braithwaite – where it was compared to Noël Coward’s modern classic The Vortex – and was filmed in 1933, starring Irene Dunne and Joel McCrea.  

Directed by Joe Harmston, and featuring a stunning in-the-round set by the Finborough Theatre’s long-time Resident Designer, Alex Marker, Sophie Ward (Chichester Festival Theatre, West End, Off Broadway, National Tours, and Young Sherlock Holmes) leads a cast including Finborough favourite Alix Dunmore (London Wall, and the title role in Jane Clegg), Jemma Carlton(recently seen in the title role in Maxine for Netflix), Dario Coates (OffWestEnd Award for Best Actor nominee, Northern Broadsides, Chichester Festival Theatre, Salisbury Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse), and George Watkins(Bridgerton, and Three Men in a Boat and Deathtrap at The Mill, Sonning). 

Playwright Sidney Howard (1891-1939) won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for They Knew What They Wanted (1924), and is best known today for his screenplay for Gone with the Wind (1939) which won him a posthumous Academy Award™ for Best Adapted Screenplay. Born in California, he studied playwriting at Harvard under George Pierce Baker in his legendary ‘47 workshop’, alongside Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Philip Barry and S. N. Behrman. Following service as an ambulance driver in the First World War, he became Literary Editor of Life, and had an overnight theatrical success with They Knew What They Wanted which went on to be filmed three times (in 1928, 1930, and 1940) and later became the Broadway musical, The Most Happy Fella. He ultimately wrote or adapted more than seventy plays, and also directed plays, and co-founded the Playwright’s Company with fellow writers including Maxwell Anderson, Robert Sherwood and Elmer Rice. His many plays include The Late Christopher Bean (1933), Alien Corn (1933), Yellow Jack(1934) and Paths of Glory (1935), later filmed by Stanley Kubrick. Howard was also much in demand in Hollywood where his screenplays included Bulldog Drummond (1929), Raffles (1930 and 1940), A Lady to Love (1930), and two Oscar™ nominations for Arrowsmith (1931) and Dodsworth (1936). He died in a freak accident on his Massachusetts farm at the age of 48. Howard was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.  

Director Joe Harmston has directed for over thirty years. He has directed over 100 productions around the world and forged associations with some of British theatre’s most significant voices including Harold Pinter, Ronald Harwood, Michael Frayn, Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall, Peter Ustinov and Bill Kenwright. He has worked as Associate Director for Chichester Festival Theatre and to Peter Hall and Trevor Nunn, as Artistic Director of Tour de Force Productions, and the Agatha Christie Theatre Company, and was a Creative Associate at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. His many productions include The Lover and The Collection (Donmar Warehouse) starring their writer, Harold Pinter, King James’ Ear (Old Red Lion Theatre), Howard’s End (King’s Head and Jermyn Street Theatres), The Rubenstein Kiss (Southwark Playhouse), Miss Nightingale (The Vaults), Murder in the Cathedral (Temple Church), Octopus Soup (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, and National Tour), The Dead Wait (Park Theatre), The Handyman (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford), The Father (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry), nominated for the TMA Award for Best Director, and national tours of Dead Lies, Dracula, And Then There Were None, Black Coffee and Star Quality. His directing for radio has been Critic’s Choice in both The Independent and Radio Times. 

Producer Andrew Maunder’s productions at the Finborough Theatre include the world premiere of Robert Graves’ But it Still Goes On, the first London production since 1944 of St John Ervine’s Jane Clegg, the first London production since 1926 of Kate O’Brien’s Distinguished Villa, and, most recently, a triple bill of Edwardian one-act plays: Makeshifts and Realities by Gertrude Robins and Honour Thy Father by H. M. Harwood which won the 2023 London Pub Theatres Award for Best Ensemble Acting and was nominated for Best Revival. He also teaches at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of British Theatre and the Great War 1914-1919 (2016), R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, A Guide (2017) and Enid Blyton. A Literary Life (2021). 

To post a comment, you must register and login.