Now Barabbas is a play by the British writer

William Douglas Home William Douglas Home (3 June 1912 – 28 September 1992) was a British dramatist and politician. Early life Douglas-Home (he later dropped the hyphen from his surname) was the third son of Charles Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home, and Lady Lili ...

. Its original West End run at the

Vaudeville Theatre The Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on the Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each ...

lasted for 130 performances from 7 March to 28 June 1947. It concerns a variety of inmates at a British prison, including new arrivals, old hands and a convicted murderer sentenced to hang. The original cast included Jill Bennett. The title refers to

Barabbas Barabbas (; ) was, according to the New Testament, a prisoner who was chosen over Jesus by the crowd in Jerusalem to be pardoned and released by Roman governor Pontius Pilate at the Passover feast. Biblical account According to all four canoni ...

the robber of biblical tradition.

Film adaptation

In 1949 the play was made into a film ''

Now Barabbas ''Now Barabbas'' is a 1949 British drama film directed by Gordon Parry and starring Richard Greene, Cedric Hardwicke and Kathleen Harrison. It is sometimes known as ''Now Barabbas Was a Robber''. It was based on a 1947 play of the same title by ...

'' starring

Richard Greene Richard Marius Joseph Greene (25 August 1918 – 1 June 1985) was a noted English film and television actor. A matinée idol who appeared in more than 40 films, he was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series '' ...

Cedric Hardwicke Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke (19 February 1893 – 6 August 1964) was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly 50 years. His theatre work included notable performances in productions of the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw, and ...

Kenneth More Kenneth Gilbert More, Order of the British Empire#Current classes, CBE (20 September 1914 – 12 July 1982) was an English film and stage actor. Initially achieving fame in the comedy ''Genevieve (film), Genevieve'' (1953), he appeared in many ...

and

Richard Burton Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...

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References

Bibliography

* Wearing, J.P. ''The London Stage 1940-1949: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 1947 plays British plays adapted into films {{1940s-play-stub