Quartermaine’s Terms: Final week – must end Saturday!
Rowan Atkinson returns to the West End in Quartermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Quartermaine's Terms is set over a period of two years in the 1960s in the staffroom at a Cambridge school for teaching English to foreigners. It follows with the interrelationship between seven teachers at the school in particular that between St John Quartermaine (Rowan Atkinson) and the others. St John is a kind-hearted and agreeable person always willing to listen to the other teacher's woes, but is pretty hopeless as a teacher himself. The appointment of a new Principal casts doubt on Quartermain's future.
Quartermaine’s Terms explores the theme of loneliness, during the course of the play the characters experience the trauma of being or feeling alone. Mark has marriage trouble; Derek, from Hull, finds Cambridge initially unwelcoming; Eddie faces bereavement; Anita’s husband is a philanderer; Henry is trapped in a dysfunctional nuclear family and Melanie is similarly trapped caring for a Mother who she despises. Quartermaine is a painfully lonely bachelor with seemingly no friends or hinterland other than his colleagues at the school.
Directed by Richard Eyre, Quartermaine’s Terms is a quintessentially British poking gentle fun at the British penchant for “muddling through” and “not complaining” – coupled with a tendency not to take firm action when necessary.
Rowan Atkinson makes his first appearance in a play in 25 years, although he played Fagin in the recent revival of Oliver at the London Palladium. He is best known for his silent, rubber-faced creation Mr Bean as well as Blackadder and Not The Nine O'clock News. Film credits include two Mr Bean films, Love, Actually and Johnny English.
Rowan Atkinson is joined by Conleth Hill, Will Keen, Felicity Montagu and Malcolm Sinclair.
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