Cast Revealed For THE WIND AND THE RAIN at the Finborough Theatre

A unique rediscovery of one of the biggest hits of the 1930s, Merton Hodge's The Wind and the Rain opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 11 July 2023. 

Edinburgh, 1933.

Charles Tritton, an eighteen-year-old medical student about to begin his studies, arrives at Mrs McFie's boarding house.

Before him lie five years' of swotting for exams and sweating over dissections, alongside his fellow residents – eternal student Gilbert Raymond who would rather be drinking and chasing girls than passing his exams; the studious sportsmanand frightful bore, John Williams; and the sage older postgraduate student, Frenchman Dr Paul Duhamel.

Charles begins his course counting down the days until he can return to the life he's left behind in London, and Jill, the girl whom he has promised to marry.

Until sculptor Anne Hargreaves walks into his study…

And Charles is suddenly torn between the life that has been mapped out for him and the unexpected possibility of another path…

Inspired by the playwright's own experiences of training at Edinburgh Medical School, and arguably by his own love life as a bisexual man in the 1930s, The Wind and the Rain is a gentle but universal coming-of-age of student life – and growing up. 

One of the biggest international hits of the 1930s, The Wind and the Rain starred Celia Johnson when it opened in the West End in 1933, running for over a thousand performances in London at three different theatres – the St. Martin's, the Queen's and the Savoy Theatres. It played for six months on Broadway, toured internationally, was translated into nine languages, was televised multiple times, and remained a staple of British repertory theatre for decades.

Playwright Merton Hodge (1903-1958) was a playwright, actor and medical practitioner. Born in Taruheru, Poverty Bay, Aotearoa/New Zealand, he graduated as a doctor from Otago Medical School in 1928, and completed his postgraduate studies at Edinburgh University which inspired the setting for The Wind and the Rain. Hodge combined his playwriting career with the busy life of a working doctor. An Australian newspaper wrote, “By day he works as an anesthetist in a big hospital at Hyde Park Corner: at night he has been writing plays which are the success of the season.” His other plays include Grief Goes Over, starring Dame Sybil Thorndike (Globe Theatre), an anglicised adaptation of Sidney Kingsley's Men In White (Lyric Theatre), The Orchard Walls (St James Theatre), The Island, written with actor Godfrey Tearle (Comedy Theatre), The Story of An African Farm from Olive Schreiner's novel (New Theatre, now the Noël Coward Theatre), To Whom We Belong and Once There Was Music (Q Theatre, Kew). Hodge mingled in bohemian and theatrical circles, partying with Ivor Novello, Noël Coward and Tallulah Bankhead. He lived with actor Geoffrey Wardwell in Ebury Street, close to Noël Coward. In 1952, Hodge returned to Aotearoa/New Zealand, married the mother of his child, and settled in Dunedin. He committed suicide by drowning near Dunedin six years later.

Director Geoffrey Beevers returns to the Finborough Theatre where he directed an acclaimed production of John Galsworthy's Windows. Other Direction includes The Middlemarch Trilogy - Dorothea's Story, The Doctor's Story and Fred and Mary, Audience, Adam Bede for which he won a Time Out Award, The Beggars Opera, Silas Marner, The Neighbours and Pere Goriot (Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond), Adam Bede (Derby Playhouse and Theatre Royal York), A Midsummer Night's Dream, Arms and the Man and Mrs Warren's Profession (Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and The Country Wife and The Case of Rebellious Susan (Drama Studio London). His original plays for theatre include Steak and Microchips and The Story of Jude. Adaptations for theatre include Adam Bede which won a Time Out Award, Pere Goriot, Silas Marner, The Middlemarch Trilogy. Original writing for radio includes Steak and Microchips, The Story of Jude and Unintelligent Design. Other plays for radio include an adaptation of Turgenev's Rudin, and drama documentaries on Gerard Manley Hopkins, James McNeil Whistler, and George Eliot. He has written four novels, The Progress Road, The Forgotten Fields, Superseeds and The Withdrawal, all published by Fantom Publishing. Primarily known as an actor, he has made hundreds of appearances across theatre, television, film and radio, including Amadeus (National Theatre), The Audience (West End and Broadway) and The Heresy of Love (Royal Shakespeare Company), and playing The Master in Doctor Who opposite Tom Baker. 
 

This cast includes Lynton Appleton (Richard III at Royal Shakespeare Company); Harvey Cole (Mercury Fur, Much Ado About Nothing and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Guildhall School of Music and Drama); David Furlong (Break of Noon at Finborough Theatre and Emmeline at The Cockpit and UK tour); Mark Lawrence (Hedda Gabler and The Tempest at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art); Jenny Lee (The Straw Chair, I Didn't Always Live Here, The Flou'ers of Edinburgh, Little Red Hen at the Finborough Theatre and It Is Easy To Be Dead and its subsequent transfer to the Trafalgar Studios, Òran Mór, Glasgow and the Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen); Joe Pitts (Spring Awakening at Almeida Theatre); Naomi Preston-Low (nominated for 'Best Supporting Actress' at the British Short Film Awards); and Helen Reuben (King Rodolfo at Soho Theatre and Love All, Savior and Pictures of Dorian Gray at Jermyn Street Theatre).

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