The Inseparables

by Grace Joy Howarth. Based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Lauren Elkin.

15 April – 10 May 2025

France during the First World War.

Nine-year-old Sylvie Lapage prays for France to be saved from the war, but her miracle arrives in the form of the new girl at school… Andrée is unlike anyone else – wildly bright and full of life.

Finally, Sylvie has someone who makes her laugh, someone to talk to about literature, equality, war, and religion, someone to call her closest friend. As the girls become inseparable, they battle against the strictness of their sheltered Catholic bourgeois upbringing.

But as the girls grow up and face the mounting pressures of becoming a young woman, will they ever find the freedom they both hunger for?

Startlingly poignant, The Inseparables tells the true story of an intimate female friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the 20th century.

Written five years after her seminal feminist text The Second Sex, The Inseparables was never published during Simone de Beauvoir’s lifetime, on the advice of her life-long partner, the existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. Finally published in 2020, it was critically acclaimed as a rediscovered classic, and now is adapted for the theatre for the very first time.

About Playwright Grace Joy Howarth

Playwright Grace Joy Howarth's previous plays include Blood on Your Hands (Southwark Playhouse), Birdie’s Adventures in the Animal Kingdom (The Greenhouse Theatre) and Until We Can’t See the Sky (Resonance FM and Chapel FM.)  Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for national awards including BBC Writersroom, the New Diorama ‘Theatre Untapped’ Award, the Phoebe Frances Brown Award, the London Library Emerging Writers Programme, the New York ‘New Plays for Young Audiences’ showcase, British Youth Music Theatre Award, and the Masterclass ‘Pitch Your Play’ award.

About Novelist Simone de Beauvoir

Novelist, philosopher, and feminist activist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a major figure in the existentialist movement in post-war France. She played a central part in the French intellectual scene, contributing to the philosophical debates of the time in her essays, plays, memoirs, novels, travel diaries, newspaper articles and as an editor of the leftist journal Les Temps Modernes. Beauvoir is most famous for her pioneering feminist text The Second Sex (1949). Her memoirs have made a significant contribution to literature, most notably the first volume Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée (1958). Her novels include She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954). She received the 1954 Prix Goncourt, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961, 1969 and 1973. Beauvoir’s life and work continue to inspire contemporary research and debate in the discipline of philosophy, feminism, and beyond.

About Director Anastasia Bunce

Director Anastasia Bunce returns to the Finborough Theatre after directing the critically acclaimed OffWestEnd Award nominated Darkie Armo Girl in 2022. Previous direction includes Blood On Your Hands (Southwark Playhouse), selected by Lyn Gardner in her Stage Door Top Picks of 2024, OffWestEnd Award finalist Meat Cute (Camden Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and Birdie’s Adventures in the Animal Kingdom (The Greenhouse Theatre). She recently returned from New York’s Off Broadway where she worked as Assistant Director to Alex Howarth on the new musical Life-Line (Signature Theatre). She is the Artistic Director of Patch Plays, a company devoted to staging new work that explores animal ethics and climate change. Anastasia trained in MA Theatre Directing at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.

15 April – 10 May 2025

Week 1

Prices until 20 April 2025

Tickets £20, £18 Concessions

Concession Details

Previews (15 and 16 April 2025) £15 all seats.
£10 tickets for Under 30s for performances from Tuesday to Sunday of the first week when booked online only.
£15 tickets for residents of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham on Saturday, 19 April 2025 at 7.30pm when booked online only.

Weeks 2 and 3

Prices from 22 April 2025 to 4 May 2025

Tickets £23, £20 Concessions

Concession Details

Tickets £23, £20 concessions, except Tuesday evenings £20 all seats.

Week 4

Prices from 6 May 2025 to 10 May 2025

Tickets £25, £23 Concessions

Concession Details

Tickets £25, £23 concessions. No concessions on Friday or Saturday evenings.

For details of our Returns Policy for sold out performances, please click here

PLEASE NOTE THAT LATECOMERS CANNOT BE ADMITTED AND TICKETS CANNOT BE EXCHANGED OR REFUNDED.

Tickets and Times

Tuesday 7:30pm
Wednesday 7:30pm
Thursday 7:30pm
Friday 7:30pm
Saturday 3:00pm
7:30pm
Sunday 3:00pm

2hrs and 30mins with an inverval of 15 mins