After the Rain: A play in three acts

BOWEN, John; [BERGNER, Elisabeth]

Published by Faber and Faber, London, 1967

About this Item

FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY PLAYWRIGHT, with ALS. 8vo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in bright gilt. Gentle pushing and wear to extremities. Boldly inscribed by Bowen in black felt-tip to ffep: "For Elisabeth Bergner, In admiration., John Bowen.," apologetic one-page ALS (on Bowen's Knightbridge-headed paper) from the playwright to "Miss Bergner". Clean and tight. In the original illustrated dust jacket, featuring John Haynes' photograph of the original production: price-clipped, creased and gently soiled, wear to spine ends and corners. Very good/ good+ A lovely inscribed copy of Bowen's most successful stage play, inscribed to the eminent Austrian stage and screen actor "in admiration", unusual signed. Set two hundred years in the future, "after the Great Rain," Bowen's play, adapted from his 1958 novel, was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre Club, London in 1966 and later transferred to Broadway (John Golden theatre, 1967) from the West End (Duchess theatre, 1967), with Alec McCowen starring in all productions. John Bowen (1924-2019) was a British playwright and novelist, who "virtually abandoned his career as a novelist in the 1960s to concentrate on writing for TV, and made his biggest impression with horror plays and ghost stories", including his "screen masterpiece" Robin Redbreast, produced three years after this publication and inscription (Hayward, 2019). The Austrian Jewish actor, Elisabeth Bergner (born Elisabeth Ettel; 1887-1986) was as lauded as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich in her heyday, renowned, as the comparisons suggest, for her androgyny and ability to flip from a boyish aesthetic in Hosenrolle to the role of femme-enfant. Born in Drohobycz in Galicia (now Ukraine), 'die Bergner' worked with the innovative Austrian producer-director Max Reinhardt, giving celebrated performances in Ibsen, Shakespeare and Shaw productions, as well as on the German screen. With the rise of the Nazis, she fled to Britain and the stages of London and Edinburgh, taking leading roles as Gemma Jones in Margaret Kennedy's Escape Me Never (1934) and David in J. M. Barrie's final play, written for her, The Boy David (1936). She gave an Oscar-nominated performance in the British film adaptation of Escape Me Never, directed by her (lavender) husband Paul Czinner, and starred alongside a young Laurence Olivier as Rosalind in the first Shakespeare talkie, As You Like It (1936). Anthony Hayward (2019) 'John Bowen: Obituary,' The Guardian.

Seller Inventory # 2074

Bibliographic Details

• Title: After the Rain: A play in three acts
• Publisher: Faber and Faber, London
• Publication Date: 1967
• Binding: Cloth
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Signed & Association Copies
  • Stage & Screen