Portraits
Augustus John's ability as portrait artist won him the admiration of fellow artists, public recognition and the Order of Merit. William Douglas Home's play presents various points in the Bohemian artist's turbulent life from 1944 – 1961 through a reconstruction of sittings with three of his subjects (all played by the same actor) – General Bernard Montgomery, fellow artist Mathew Smith and designer Cecil Beaton. This keenly observed, sensitive play is finely interwoven with the thread of John's gradually developing pacifism – from his certainty in spring 1944 that Monty's young ADC will not survive the second front, to war's devastating effect on Matthew Smith, to John's vibrant fear of the nuclear nightmare and his own approaching death. The first production of this play in 24 years, Portraits commemorates the 50th anniversary of the death of artist Augustus John.
WILLIAM DOUGLAS-HOME (1912-1992) was one of the West End's most successful postwar dramatists with over 40 plays to his name. The younger brother of Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home, he regularly stood for Parliament himself. He was court-martialled and imprisoned during the Second World War for his refusal to obey orders during the Allied operation to capture the port of Le Havre in September 1944 because French civilians had not been permitted to evacuate.