Daphne Laureola

Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright star in James Bridie's romantic period comedy-drama about a Polish refugee's infatuation with an Englishwoman

Director
Waris Hussein

From the play by
James Bridie

Cast
Lady Pitts : Joan Plowright
Gooch : Arthur Lowe
George : Grégoire Aslan
Ernst : Clive Arrindell
Vincent : Bryan Marshall
Sir Joseph : Laurence Olivier
Maisie : Jane Carr
Helen : Sara Clee
Bill : Michael Cochrane
Assistant Waiter : Jan Conrad
Bored Woman : Moyra Fraser
Mr Watson : Willoughby Goddard
Bored Man : Basil Henson
Bob : David Neville
Manager : Michael Syers

James Bridie's 1949 play Daphne Laureola was selected by Laurence Olivier as one of his top six of the century, and in this production from 1978 he leads a top-class cast which also features Joan Plowright (his third wife) and Arthur Lowe.

Bridie was born Osborne Henry Mavor in Glasgow on 3 Jan 1888. His plays first began to be performed in the late 1920s; The Anatomist (1930), based on the body-snatchers Burke and Hare, was a great success in London, and Mavor went on to write a large number of West-end plays. He left 42 plays in all, and died in Edinburgh in 1951.

Daphne Laureola is a romantic comedy about a young Polish refugee's infatuation with a middle-aged English woman. Despite the limits put on his reputation by middle-class assumptions, Bridie's plays remain good theatre. His characters toss ideas about playfully as well as analytically, and often the drama hinges on the contrast between a mocking, reductive Scottish spirit on the one hand, and a driven character pushing an idea or obsession forward on the other - qualities clear in this play, where the central character is a drunken upper-class woman. (The play was a huge success in London but a flop in Scotland.)