Hemingway drama of love under fire reaches the London stage, eight decades later
A LITTLE-KNOWN play by Ernest Hemingway is to have its debut performance in London, 78 years after it was written.
The Fifth Column, the writer’s only full-length play, set during the Spanish Civil War, was never performed on the London stage, and has fallen largely out of public memory after failing to win over the critics. It will be staged at Southwark Playhouse after a producer managed to secure the rights for his company, which specialises in finding lost gems for the stage.
The Fifth Column, which was written in 1937 and staged in Glasgow in 1944 but did not transfer in London under the bombs of Second World War, shares similarities with Hemingway’s classic
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
It did not take off on stage, partly because its enormous cast made it complicated and expensive to put on.
It will open in March next year, with tickets on sale now, and will mark 80 years since the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
The Fifth Column tells the story of two American war correspondents who fall passionately in love while sheltering in a hotel under bombardment by Franco’s artillery. “Around them, people are struggling, often comically, to survive,” a spokesman for the play explained. “The idealism of the young men who came to fight with the Inter- national Brigades is contrasted with the ruthlessness of civil war.”
The play is based on real events. Hemingway himself experienced the civil war with his lover Martha Gellhorn, one of the first female war correspondents.
Graham Cowley, the show’s producer, has taken on the challenge of staging it with Two’s Company, which specialises in “forgotten masterpieces” of the 20th century. He has now secured the rights to put it on in England after tracking down Hemingway’s former publishers through an academic who heard of his plans.
“It’s a great honour to be given the rights to it,” Cowley told The Sunday
Telegraph. “He was a world-class writer who wrote from direct experience – that’s what makes us so excited.”
The play is recognisably Hemingway’s work, the producer said. “If you love Hemingway, you’ll love this.”