After The Dance

After the Dance is a play by Terence Rattigan which premièred at the St James's Theatre, London, on 21 June 1939. It was not one of Rattigan's more successful plays, closing after only sixty performances, a failure that led to its exclusion from his first volume of Collected Plays. Critics have tended to attribute this relative contemporary failure to the play's darkness which may have reminded audiences of the approaching European war. However, the 2010 revival of the play was a commercial and critical success with The Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington stating that Thea Sharrock's production starring Benedict Cumberbatch confirmed that Rattigan is one of the "supreme dramatists of the 20th century".