Edinburgh, 1933.
Charles Tritton, an eighteen-year-old medical student about to begin his studies, arrives at Mrs McFies boarding house.
Before him lie five years of swotting for exams and sweating over dissections, alongside his fellow residents " eternal student Gilbert Raymond who would rather be drinking and chasing girls than passing his exams; the studious sportsman and frightful bore, John Williams; and the sage older postgraduate student, Frenchman Dr Paul Duhamel.
Charles begins his course counting down the days until he can return to the life hes left behind in London, and Jill, the girl whom he has promised to marry.
Until sculptor, Anne Hargreaves walks into his study
And Charles is suddenly torn between the life that has been mapped out for him and the unexpected possibility of another path
Inspired by the playwrights own experiences of training at Edinburgh Medical School, and arguably by his own love life as a bisexual man in the 1930s, The Wind and the Rain is a gentle but universal coming-of-age of student life " and growing up.
One of the biggest international hits of the 1930s, The Wind and the Rain starred Celia Johnson when it opened in the West End in 1933, running for over a thousand performances in London at three different theatres " the St. Martins, the Queens and the Savoy Theatres. It played for six months on Broadway, toured internationally, was translated into nine languages, was televised multiple times, and remained a staple of British repertory theatre for decades.
