Idiot's Delight

Idiot's Delight is a play by Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955)[1].

The original text

A play about a number of guests - including a British couple on their honeymoon, and people from Germany, France, and America - trapped in the Hotel Monte Gabriel in the Italian Alps, at the beginning of a world war.

The play was produced by the Theatre Guild and directed by Bretaigne Windust. After a pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theatre, Washington, D.C., it opened at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway on 24 March, 1936, and ran for 300 performances till 30 January, 1937.

The play was nominated for the 1936 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, Best American Play and awarded the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Translations and adaptations

The play was adapted for film by Sherwood and filmed in 1939 with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable.[2]

Translated into Afrikaans as Die Hotel op die Grens ("The hotel on the border") and adapted as a radio play by S.J. Pretorius in 1961.

Performance history in South Africa

1961: The radio adaptation, Die Hotel op die Grens, was broadcast by the SABC in the programme Radioteater on 3 March, directed by Pieter Grobbelaar.