In Celebration

Stage to screen transfer of the David Storey play directed at the Royal Court by Lindsay Anderson in 1969, with the cast remaining the same. Not strictly autobiographical, but rooted in the playwright's Nottinghamshire mining background, In Celebration is set in the family home on the night three grown-up sons return somewhat reluctantly to celebrate their parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Anderson has said, 'The stage gives the audience a broader aspect of a scene than film, and therefore the rehearsals were perhaps more valid for me than for the actors.' The play was re-rehearsed for three weeks before shooting, and location scenes were filmed in the colliery town, but it still emerges as an awkward compromise between the two forms, though Bates is splendid as Andrew, the failed painter.