Ring Round the Moon

21 - 24 October, 1970

A Charade with music.

Jean Anouilh’s Ring Around the Moon first appeared in France in 1947 as L’Invitation au Chateau. Especially important in Anouilh’s career, the play is the earliest of his pieces brillantes, a rather mixed group of four works moving from two lighter to two darker pieces. Brilliantes has been employed to describe the polished and sophisticated gemlike quality of this group, most prominently displayed in Ring Around the Moon’s complex plotting, ceaseless obstacles, and still—after all—the reconciliation of almost all of its characters to both love and wealth.

Ring Round the Moon was, in 1950, the first of Anouilh's plays to be successful on the London stage, due largely to the inspired adaption and translation by Christopher Fry.

Fry had difficulty in finding a sub-title which would help an English audience to understand what sort of play to expect. A comedy? A farce? Each had wrong connotations. Then Fry found an answer - call it "A Charade with Music" he suggested. He must have had in mind the charming music specially composed by Richard Addinsell, of which we have been most fortunate in being able to hire recordings.

In our production of what we regard as a very fine play we have aimed to preserve the light-hearted atmosphere of a delicate French bauble with its scenes of high comedy and sentiment in which gentle satire is never far from the surface.