THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE Comes to Jermyn Street Theatre Next Month

New York, 1943. Sally Middleton has sworn off love, vowing to focus on her stage career instead. However, her best friend and fellow actor Olive Lashbrooke has other plans. When Olive discovers that an old flame is in town, Sally finds herself stuck consoling Olive's current beau, Sergeant Bill Page. Trapped in Sally's apartment to escape the rain with only cocktails for company, what will happen when two people bruised by love are thrown together for a weekend?

 

The Voice of The Turtle is a heart-warming comedy by John Van Druten – best-known for I Am A Camera, which formed the basis of the book for Cabaret.  The original production opened in New York in 1943 and ran for 1,557 performances, making it one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. A witty, wise and romantic play, it now returns to the West End for the first time since it played at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1947. Directed by Philip Wilson who returns to Jermyn Street Theatre after the success of The Oyster Problem, it follows on from Jermyn Street Theatre's acclaimed revival of Van Druten's Flowers of the Forest in 2014.

Director, Philip Wilson says, "I have longed for the opportunity to direct this play since I first read it, 15 or so years ago. Intrigued by the title and the play's reputation, I half-expected a light Broadway comedy – but found instead a wonderfully sensitive, heartfelt and nuanced study of two people who have been hurt, figuring out whether they are brave enough to make themselves vulnerable again, and to step back into the arena of love.

Jermyn Street Theatre is the perfect place in which to rediscover this story: the play was originally a huge hit on Broadway's epic stages, but in JST audiences find themselves eavesdropping on lives, witnessing life in close-up. That, for me, is the ideal arena in which to follow Sally, Bill and Olive in their search for intimacy, companionship, love."

 

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