South Downs is a 2011 play by the British playwright and author David Hare. It is set in 1962 in a public school, similar to Hare's own school, Lancing

Lancing College

Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...

, in the South Downs

South Downs

The South Downs is a range of chalk hills that extends for about across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, East Sussex, in the east. It is bounded on its northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose...

. It is a response to Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...

's The Browning Version and was commissioned by Rattigan's estate to mark Rattigan's Centenary.

It premiered alongside a revival of Rattigan's The Browning Version from 2 September to 8 October 2011 at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester

Minerva Theatre, Chichester

The Minerva Theatre is a studio theatre seating at full capacity 283. It is run as part of the adjacent Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, and was opened in 1989...

 (the small auditorium of the Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....

).

The two plays were directed separately by Jeremy Herrin

Jeremy Herrin

Jeremy Herrin is an English theatre director and currently the Deputy Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London. He trained as a theatre director at both the Royal Court and the National Theatre...

 (South Downs) and Angus Jackson (The Browning Version). Cast of the two plays, South Downs/The Browning Version, includes Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey (actor)

Jonathan Bailey is an English Actor. He was born on 25 April 1988, in Aylesbury Vale, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. He is not to be confused with another English actor named Jonathon Bailey born in 1940s who played young Prince Arthur in the 1950s TV series Adventures of Robin Hood...

, Anna Chancellor

Anna Chancellor

-Family:Chancellor was born in Richmond, London, England, the daughter of the Hon. Mary Alice Jolliffe and John Paget Chancellor. Through her mother's mother, Lady Perdita Rose Mary Asquith, Chancellor is the great-granddaughter of The Hon. Raymond Aquith and the great-great-granddaughter of Prime...

, Jack Elliott, Nicholas Farrell

Nicholas Farrell

Nicholas Farrell is an English stage, film and television actor. His early screen career included the role of Aubrey Montague in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. In 1983, he starred as Edmund Bertram in a television adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, Mansfield Park...

, Bradley Hall, Robert Heaps, Amanda Fairbank Hynes, Alex Lawther, Liam Morton, Mark Umbers

Mark Umbers

Mark Umbers is an English actor known for his work in theatre, films, and television.Born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, Umbers was brought up in Wetherby. In 1991 he enrolled at Oxford University to study Latin and Greek Literature and Philosophy...

, and Andrew Woodall

Andrew Woodall

Andrew Woodall is an English actor of the stage and screen. Among his theatre credits are The Voysey Inheritance, The Life of Galileo, King Lear and As You Like It. He has also appeared in British television shows such as Prime Suspect, Kavanagh QC, Dalziel and Pascoe and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme [BBC...

.

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