The play premiered in London at the Duchess Theatre in September 1938; with Sybil Thorndike as Miss Moffat and Williams himself portraying Morgan Evans, the West End production ran in all for 600 performances.

She takes in Morgan Evans, an illiterate but promising teenager, to prepare him for higher schooling, but finds she must help him deal with the long-term consequences of an impulsive choice he had made earlier.

Born in 1905, Emlyn Williams grew up in the impoverished coal-mining town of Mostyn in Flintshire, Wales, and spoke only Welsh until the age of eight.

He was barely literate, and later said he would probably have begun working in the mines at age 12 if he had not caught the attention of a London social worker named Sarah Grace Cooke.

[7][8] Boys, girls and parents were played by Julia Knox, Amelia Romano, Betty Conibear, Rosalind Carter, Harda Normann, Joseph McInerney, Marcel Dill, Gwilym Williams and Tommy Dix.

[9] Barrymore and Waring reprised their roles in a return engagement—again produced and directed by Herman Shumlin—that ran May 3 – June 19, 1943 at the Martin Beck Theatre.