3 Days in May

The three days of the title are in May 1940 when Mr Churchill, the new prime minister of UK, is balancing on a knife edge with some of the war cabinet wanting to negotiate a surrender  via Mussolini  and others claiming it would be better to fight to the death rather than succumb to the horrors of becoming a vassal state to Fascist Germany. With France on the brink of capitulating, what is left of the allied armies are holed up at Dunkirk, with Belgium on the brink of being overrun; and a garrison of British led soldiers is fighting off the Germans at Calais. It seems a hopeless situation, but  Churchill will never surrender, and persuades the ailing Chamberlain to vote against the proposal to surrender thus triggering the Dunkirk evacuation that saved thousands of fighting men to face another day. A pivotal point of WWII, we see how the wily Churchill wins the day that leads to the allies winning the war.
Warren Clarke makes a wonderful Winston Churchill and is well supported by Jeremy Clyde as Lord Halifax, Robert Demeger as Neville Chamberlain and with James Alper as Jock Colville, Churchill's Private Secretary and our narrator. Other members of the cast are Timothy Knightley as Paul Reynaud, the French premier, Michael Sheldon as Clement Attlee, Dicken Ashworth as Arthur Greenwood and Paul Ridley as General Dill.

Ben Brown's 3 Days on May moves to the Trafalgar Studios for a run in the West End from Monday 31st October – Saturday 3rd March 2012. Directed by Alan Strachan, it is a Bill Kenwright Production.