Papers of Sir Cecil Beaton

The one great quality of Gainsborough Girls is its "period charm". Burton puts the failure of the Brighton production down to three faults: Beaton's dialogue, the miscasting of Angus, and a production that sacrificed everything for the sake of efficiency. Burton approves of the rewritten dialogue which "strikes a happy balance between the 18th century and modern English". He is insistent that Beaton's "personal idiom", be preserved at all cost. A successful period play must convey "Ease, Grace, and Precision". The director must have knowledge of the period to convey a "sense of the past" or else the production will fail.