Semi-Detached is a play written by David Turner

David Turner (dramatist)

David Turner was a British playwright.From a working class background, he studied French at Birmingham University and subsequently worked as a school teacher in that city...

. It was premiered at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

Belgrade Theatre

The Belgrade Theatre is a live performance venue seating 858 and situated in Coventry, England. It was the first civic theatre to be built after the Second World War in Britain and as such was more than a place of entertainment...

 in June 1962 with Leonard Rossiter

Leonard Rossiter

Leonard Rossiter was an English actor known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp , and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin...

 in the lead role and directed by Tony Richardson

Tony Richardson

Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...

.

It transferred to London, still directed by Richardson, but with Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 (replacing Rossiter), Eileen Atkins

Eileen Atkins

Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

, John Thaw

John Thaw

John Edward Thaw, CBE was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being police and legal dramas such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.-Early life:Thaw came from a working class background, having been born in Gorton,...

, James Bolam

James Bolam

James Christopher Bolam, MBE is a British actor, best known for his roles as Jack Ford in When the Boat Comes In, Trevor Chaplin in The Beiderbecke Trilogy, Terry Collier in The Likely Lads and its sequel Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Roy Figgis in Only When I Laugh, Dr Arthur Gilder in...

 and Mona Washbourne

Mona Washbourne

Mona Washbourne was an English actress of stage, film and television.Mona Washbourne began her entertaining career training as a concert pianist. While performing on stage in the early 1920s, she found that she liked acting and became an actress...

. The play reached Broadway in New York for a season in 1963 and a film version All the Way Up (1970), directed by James MacTaggart

James MacTaggart

James MacTaggart was a Scottish born television producer, director and writer.After an initial career as an actor, MacTaggart worked for BBC Radio in Scotland before moving into television, relocating to London around 1961...

, starred Richard Briers

Richard Briers

Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...

. The play was revived at the Chichester Festival in 1999.

Plot

Set in the Midlands, Fred Midway is working his way up the social ladder. His desire to be accepted in circles to which he and his family do not really belong occupies much of his energy. Needless to say, at first Fred's carefully laid plans to boost his standing in the local community backfire, before coming right in the end.