On the night of Saturday and Sunday 10th-11th May 1941, the sky over Southern Britain was filled with the distinctive beat of German aircraft engines as the Luftwaffe made once more for East London.

This night would be different. It was to be one of the heaviest raids of the blitz.

Against this appalling background “St Crispin’s Night” recalls in dramatic detail the experiences of a group of East Londoners taking refuge in their shelter in the crypt of St Crispin’s church during what came to be known as “The Longest Night”.

These are ordinary people, trying to lead ordinary lives caught up in the most extraordinary events. People, whose emotions had already been calloused by nine months of bombing.

Written with warmth and humanity, by Winifred Beaumont who had been an air raid shelter nurse in Hackney during the blitz, the play tells a fascinating story. Whilst the individual characters she depicts are fictitious, their situations and emotions are all too real.

“There’s your first problem.  No Civil War movie ever made a dime. 
Or ever will.”

Hollywood 1939: the novel “Gone With The Wind” is about to become the biggest hit movie in history EXCEPT the maniacal movie producer David O. Selznick has shut down production, fired the director and torn up the script.  He is costing the studio thousands of dollars a day.

Thus begins a comedy of hilarious slapstick as Selznick hires reluctant script doctor Ben Hecht, (author of ‘The Front Page’ and possibly the only person in America who hasn’t read the 1000 page plus book), and director Victor Fleming (fresh from punching Judy Garland and squabbling with drunken Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”).

Hecht thinks that the book “Gone With The Wind” is another “Moonlight and Magnolias” style piece of rubbish and bound to fail.  Not only that, he says, “No Civil War movie ever made a dime”.

Desperate, Selznick locks his two collaborators and himself in his office with nothing but bananas and peanuts to sustain them.  He and Fleming have just 5 days to act out the whole story for Hecht.

Aided by Miss Poppenguhl, the super efficient secretary, chaos reigns as they work their way from Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara to the burning of Atlanta and back again as everything gradually falls apart.

This highly acclaimed play, written by Ron Hutchinson, the Irish-born playwright and Emmy-winning writer/producer for features and television, was first produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago (2004) and debuted in London at the Tricycle Theatre, (2007).

Based on a ‘true’ story, this is a play about which, frankly, my dears, you will give a damn!