Honour

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Play Closed 6 May 2006

Wyndham's Theatre Charing Cross Road, London

Can long-term love be passionate? Can passion be inherent in a long-term loving relationship? 'Honor' is happily married to 'George', a distinguished TV journalist, for who she abandoned a promising literary career.

But when 'Claudia', a young ambitious journalist arrives to interview him, the meeting precipitates a marital crisis that has both unexpected consequences and surprising resolutions for them and their grown up daughter 'Sophie'.

Joanne Murray-Smith's touching, immaculately drawn tale of a mature marriage is funny and poignant, describing the moving balance of power with astonishing accuracy.

This new production of Honour is directed by David Grindley and stars Diana Rigg as 'Honor' and Martin Jarvis as 'George'.

"This heart-rending, hard-edged and devastating play by Joanna Murray-Smith is about love, lust, loyalty, betrayal and survival, their price and their value, which are seldom the same. It heaves and bursts with a cruel and sensitive intelligence... David Grindley's spellbinding, ruthlessly perceptive production makes him the kind of 24-carat contender the theatre needs... Martin Jarvis has captured the essence of the posh academic who is being flattered and the middle-aged man who is being skilfully seduced... Diana Rigg gives one of the subtlest, most generous and most moving performances of her career." The Sunday Times

"A warm and complacent marriage has a bucket of icy water thrown over it in Joanna Murray-Smith's nicely observed but unremarkable play. The shock arrives in the form of a frostily beautiful young journalist who awakens the passions of her interviewee, George, a conceited intellectual played by Martin Jarvis." The Observer

"Honour, by Joanna Murray-Smith, at Wyndham's Theatre is a souffle-light diagnosis of a 30-year marriage between two writers... There are some good one-liners here - but as a dissection of modern marriage it is on a par with an Easy Living article about women putting their creativity on hold for their man. And at most it's a mildly amusing evening with a bittersweet conclusion." The Sunday Telegraph

The playwright Joanna Murray-Smith on Honour: "The play is the dissection of a marriage. It's about the consequences of a man who goes off with the younger woman - the consequences of that event on himself, on the wife that he leaves, on the woman he leaves his wife for and on the daughter. It's the older story in the world. There is nothing at all original about the storyline of Honour, but what perhaps makes it distinctive is that it's written in a particular way where we view that experience from all fours perspectives - the husband, the wife, the lover and the daughter."

Honour premiered at The National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in 2003 where is played to sell-out audiences.