[1] Set in a hotel near an RAF Bomber Command airbase during the Second World War, the story involves a love triangle between a pilot, his actress wife and a famous film star.

The situation is complicated when Peter Kyle, a Hollywood film star, arrives at the hotel, and Teddy is sent out on a night raid over Germany.

Also present at the hotel are the proprietor, Mrs. Oakes; Percy, a young waiter who is interested in RAF operations; and an airman named Corporal Wiggy Jones.

Soon after everyone has arrived, Squadron Leader Swanson summons the men back to base for an unscheduled night operation, and their wives are left behind to await their return.

She tells Peter, "I used to think that our private happiness was something far too important to be affected by outside things, like war or marriage vows..." but that "beside what's happening out there; ... it's just tiny and rather – cheap – I'm afraid.

As Doris observes in the play, flare paths also attracted German night fighters to target the RAF planes.

"[12] Among the dignitaries who attended performances of Flare Path were Air Marshal Sir Philip Joubert[13] and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

"[16] In 2011, Trevor Nunn directed a West End revival of Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket as part of the playwright Terence Rattigan's centenary year celebrations.

"[24] According to Charles Spencer of The Telegraph, "Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path (1942), rarely ranked in the top drawer of his plays, emerges in Trevor Nunn’s superb production as a three-handkerchief weepie that somehow manages to be both profoundly moving and wonderfully funny.

"[25] Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "...Trevor Nunn uses Rattigan's insightful characterizations to create a multilayered view of war and what it does to people.

Given the circumstances, you'd hardly expect a debate about the morality of the air offensive: what the play provides, with Rattigan's characteristic flair for understatement, is a deeply moving portrait of people at war.

"[27] Henry Hitchings of the London Evening Standard noted that the play might seem dated, but said "...there's no mistaking Rattigan's talent for depicting repressed emotion and tragicomic acts of concealment.

"[27] Sam Marlowe of The Arts Desk called it "...a shattering ensemble work, in which every detail glows with truth, compassion and humanity, and where every seemingly ordinary second of life in an existence hemmed in by the ever-present threat of death is charged with a quiet intensity.

"[29] Paul Callan of The Express offered a dissenting view, finding fault with the slow pace and describing the characters as stereotypes that "sadly combine to show the age-lines on this play, even if it is a well-crafted example of Rattigan’s skilled writing.