Our 2005 production is This Happy Breed, written by Noel Coward and directed by Charlotte Mannion

This Happy Breed was a stage play written by Noel Coward, first staged in 1939. The title is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare's Richard II, and refers to the English people.

The action of the play is centred on the fortunes of the lower middle-class Gibbons family in the suburbs of South London between 1919 and the outbreak of World War II in September 1939; it is one of very few Coward plays to deal entirely with domestic events outside an upper-class or upper middle-class setting.

The play very subtly hints at the non-violent ways in which social justice issues might be incorporated into post-war national reconstruction, examines the personal trauma caused by the sudden death of sons and daughters, and also acclimatizes English women to the forthcoming return of their husbands from the war. It is also an intimate portrait of the economy and politics of England in the 1920s and 30s.

The play was the subject of a highly successful feature-film adaptation in 1944, directed by David Lean.