The initial Broadway production, put on by the Group Theater and directed by Elia Kazan, closed after a short run, but the play was far more successful in wartime London.

[3][4] It was first produced in a little-known theater in South Kensington but was transferred, with secret funding from Her Majesty's Treasury,[5] to the Globe Theatre in London's West End.

[6][7]: 66 Thunder Rock has seen many adaptations, including a BBC radio version in 1940 and a 1942 film starring Michael Redgrave and Barbara Mullen with James Mason in a minor role.

[7]: 66 The Dramatists Play Service gives the following synopsis of Thunder Rock: The action passes in a lighthouse on Lake Michigan.

As he talks to them we see passengers as they really were, each seeking sanctuary from a disturbed Europe, running away from life, yet needing the same hope and strength as Charleston himself.

Charleston's sincerity convinces these creatures that he really has the courage to lead his fellow men into a better world, and in this faith they are content to die again.

[11]The initial inspiration for Thunder Rock came in 1938 while the playwright, Robert Ardrey, then on an extended honeymoon on Nantucket, was working on a different play.

He writes in his autobiography of the moment of inspiration during a performance of Swan Lake: That afternoon, eyes closed, enjoying the music with moderation, I descended into a world between the Tigris and the Styx.

[7]: 63 Having finished the first draft Ardrey showed it to his agent, Harold Freedman, and to his friend, the influential Broadway director and producer Elia Kazan, who had directed Casey Jones.

Rehearsals were begun amidst growing tension in Europe, and the company, convinced that war would break out within weeks, resolved to open as quickly as they could.

[7]: 63  However, after the Invasion of Poland there was a period of relative quiet in Europe, leading to a belief in America that the threat had been overblown.

"[15] The play, which called for American involvement in a crisis in Europe, debuted to an increasingly isolationist audience amid a growing conception that there would be no war.

During the winter of 1939 Ardrey's Broadway agent Harold Freedman sold the British rights of Thunder Rock to the London theater director Herbert Marshall.

Marshall sent the script to then rising star Michael Redgrave, who later wrote, "I thought it one of the most exciting plays I had ever read.

[21][22] The eminent British theater critic Harold Hobson wrote that the opening night was "One of the greatest evenings … in the entire history of the theatre.

"[1] When Winston Churchill read of the play, he sent his Minister of Information, Duff Cooper; his scientific advisor, Lord Lindeman; and his wife, Clementine.

[23] Duff Cooper reported back to Churchill, who is said to have told his cabinet that "This play is the greatest contribution to British Morale there has yet been.

[23] With the closure of West End theatres, the production went on tour from September to November, with Alec Guinness replacing Redgrave.

"[21] Eminent theater critic Harold Hobson later reflected on the significance of Thunder Rock: "The theatre… did a great deal to keep the morale of the British people high.

[7]: 66  It was translated into French as La Tour d'ivoire ("The Ivory Tower") and produced in Paris in 1958 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.