Night and Day. Tom Stoppard

moving to the ANTA Theater in New York on 27 November 1979.

      The cast was as follows:

George Guthrie	Dwight Schultz
Francis	Larry Riley
Ruth Carson	Maggie Smith
Alastair Carson	T.J. Scott
Dick Wagner	Paul Hecht
Jacob Milne	Peter Evans
Geoffrey Carson	Joseph Maher
President Mageeba	Clarence Williams III
Directed by	Peter Wood
Decor by	Carl Toms
Lighting by	Neil Peter Jampolis
Presented by	James M. Nederlander and Michael Codron

      Night and Day was revived by the American Conservatory Theater at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco on 19 September 2002.

      The cast was as follows:

George Guthrie	Paul Whitworth
Francis	Gregory Wallace
Ruth Carson	René Augesen
Alastair Carson	Harley Grandin/Zachary Lenat
Dick Wagner	Marco Barricelli
Jacob Milne	T. Edward Webster
Geoffrey Carson	Anthony Fusco
President Mageeba	Steven Anthony Jones
Directed by	Carey Perloff
Decor by	Annie Smart
Lighting by	Peter Maradudin

       A NOTE ON ‘RUTH’

      The audience is occasionally made privy to Ruth’s thoughts, and to hers alone. This text makes no reference to the technique by which this is achieved. (It may be that—ideally—no technical indication is necessary.) When Ruth’s thoughts are audible she is simply called ‘Ruth’ in quotes, and treated as a separate character. Thus, Ruth can be interrupted by ‘Ruth’.

      This rule is also loosely applied to the first scene of Act Two, where the situation is somewhat different.

       THE SET

      An empty stage with a cyclorama, representing the open air, and a living room share the stage in various proportions, including total occupancy by the one or the other. Thus, the living room is mobile. Herewith, a few dogmatic statements tentatively offered. The play begins with the empty stage (possibly a low skyline in front of the cyclorama). The room makes its first appearance by occupying about half the stage, the rest of the stage becoming garden. For Alastair’s entrance the room moves further round into view, leaving a corner of garden. The first act ends with a reverse transition to the empty stage. The second act presents the room in its position of total occupancy of the stage. There is, however, a limiting factor; we have to have a good view of the interior of an adjoining room, an office-study, which contains a telex machine. We see the machine through the door of the study, when the door is open; and the door can also shut it out of our view. When we first encounter the living room, the study door being open, we can see that the telex machine is operating, that is, the paper stuttering out of the machine. After Alastair’s entrance, our view of the machine does not have to be so direct. But, again, when the room is in its Act Two position we need a clear view of a man sitting at the telex. The telex is like a large modern typewriter, on a desk. It has to be ‘practical’ and operate on cue.

      We are in a fictitious African country, formerly a British Colony. The living room is part of a large and expensive house. The furniture is European with local colour. It looks comfortable and well used. Essentials include a telephone, marble-topped table or sideboard with bottles and glasses on it, and a large sofa. The verandah also has suitable furniture on it, including a small table and a couple of chairs at the downstage end. The garden will contain at least one long comfortable cane chair. The room should seat five people comfortably, possibly around a low table. This furniture might well be in a shallow well, so that people entering the room from further inside the house, or from the study, do so from a good vantage. The room could be connected with the rest of the house through a door, more likely double-doors, or it might continue out of sight into the wings.

      The first act—after the prologue—starts just before sunset, the last rays illuminating the garden; twilight follows quickly on this, and darkness has overtaken the play by the time of Ruth’s second entrance.