Separate Tables

Separate Tables is the collective name of two one-act plays by Terence Rattigan, both taking place in the Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, a town on the south seacoast of England. The first play, entitled Table by the Window, focuses on the troubled relationship between a disgraced Labour politician and his ex-wife. The second play, Table Number Seven, is set about eighteen months after the events of the previous play, and deals with the touching friendship between a repressed spinster and a kindly but bogus man posing as an upper-class retired army officer, Major Pollock. The two principal roles in both plays are written to be played by the same performers. The secondary characters – permanent residents, the hotel's manager, and members of the staff – appear in both plays. The plays are about people who are driven by loneliness into a state of desperation.

After an out-of-town tryout in Manchester,Separate Tables had its premiere at the St James's Theatre in London on 22 September 1954, with the following cast:

The play was directed by Peter Glenville, with sets by Michael Weight. It opened to good reviews; Harold Hobson called the second play in the double-bill, "one of Rattigan's masterpieces, in which he shows in superlative degree his pathos, his humour and his astounding mastery over [the] English language...". The production was a commercial success, running for 726 performances.

In Table by the Window, Martin, a once-rising politician, now turned to drink, is dining with his ex-wife, whom he was sent to prison for beating. She, having remarried, is now divorced a second time, and seeks a reconciliation with Martin. Miss Cooper, the manageress of the hotel is his mistress, but after an off-stage confrontation with the ex-wife, Miss Cooper helps, with great generosity, to bring about a cautious reunion of the former married couple.

In Table Number Seven, Major Pollock tries to conceal from his fellow guests a report in the local newspaper of his sexual harassment of women at a local cinema. A repressed and hysterical young woman, under the thumb of her formidable mother, takes his side and falls in love with him. Again Miss Cooper encourages her guests to examine their feelings honestly and face their futures bravely. In an early draft of the play, Rattigan had Major Pollock's misdemeanour not as harassment of women but homosexual importuning; The critic Kenneth Tynan commented at the time of the premiere that the version used then was "as good a handling of sexual abnormality as English playgoers will tolerate."

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