What an excellent thread – I wish the rest of the internet was like this.
I’m not sure anyone’s mentioned it yet, however if not may I add to the list of plays a show called “Flarepath”, by Terence Rattigan.
Assorted internet references imply this one is still being put on now and again.
I’ve never seen it – I remember however a reference to it in Dave McIntosh’s “Terror in the Starboard Seat”. Evidently it was running during the war:
“My favourite wartime play was Terence Rattigan’s Flarepath! I saw it again and again. It was all about a bomber pilot cracking up – mentally, that is – in the middle of his tour. The sound effects and lighting were marvellous: guns, bombs, fires, searchlights. When the house lights came up, I always strolled out casually to show everybody that, by God, the Brits might crack up under pressure but Canadians didn’t.”
That last bit is obviously tongue-in-cheek: McIntosh spends most of the rest of the book describing his “twitching ring.”
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