The Potting Shed is a 1957 play by Graham Greene in three acts. The psychological drama centers on a secret held by the Callifer family for nearly thirty years.
The patriarch of the family is dying and James, his estranged son, appears unexpectedly. He can remember nothing about a mysterious moment that occurred in the family's potting shed when he was age 14. Family members who recall the event are unwilling to describe it to him. With the help of a psychoanalyst, James tries to recall just what happened that day that left him rejected by his father, alienated from his family, and alone in the world.
The third act of the play differed between the 1957 American and 1958 British productions. An author's note in the British edition of the published play (William Heinemann, 1958) states:
The Potting Shed was produced in New York in 1957 with a different third act which appears in the American edition of the play. For the English production, we have reverted to the last act as it was originally written and this is the only version authorised for Great Britain.
Greene never was pleased with the third act and rewrote it during rehearsals of the American production; he changed it back to the original script for the British premiere.[3]
Time wrote "The play's emotional power derives from its harassed outcries and silences, from very human bafflements and needs, from a truly serious man's intensities and jocosities alike...for two acts, culminating in a superbly dramatic revelation scene, The Potting Shed, by its writing and storytelling alike, more and more grips and stirs its audience."
