Anna Chancellor celebrates Bafta nod at opening of South Downs and The Browning Version

Anna Chancellor was celebrating on Tuesday as she starred in a new West End double-bill hours after receiving her first Bafta nomination.

The actress said she was "very thrilled" that she was in the race for best supporting actress for her role in the BBC's 1950s-set current affairs drama The Hour.

She was speaking after the opening night of Sir David Hare's South Downs and Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version at London's Harold Pinter Theatre.

Playwright Hare also received a Bafta nomination on Tuesday for his one-off TV spy drama Page Eight, which starred Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz and Michael Gambon.

His new play South Downs was commissioned as a companion piece to Rattigan's one-act The Browning Version (1948). Both works focus on the isolation associated with public school education.

The double bill has moved to the West End after a sell-out debut at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2011.

Giving the transfer a five-star review, <link> <caption>The Arts Desk</caption> <url href="http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/south-downsthe-browning-version-harold-pinter-theatre" platform="highweb"/> </link> 's David Benedict said: "This riveting, dovetailed double-bill offers profound emotional rewards while barely raising its voice."

As well as Chancellor, the cast includes Nicholas Farrell, Jonathan Bailey and teenage newcomer Alex Lawther as a bright, schoolboy loner in South Downs.

South Downs was part-inspired by Hare's own experiences as a boarder in the 1960s at Lancing College, in West Sussex.

The South Downs cast went on a minibus trip to Hare's old school to help them prepare for their roles.

"It was invaluable for us to get a sense of the atmosphere of the place," said Farrell.

"We went into one of the studies of the house masters which was exactly the room that a couple of the scenes in the play are set in."

Speaking after Tuesday's opening night, Hare said that he hadn't been daunted by the task of writing a new curtain-raiser to Rattigan's classic.

"The Browning Version is always played with one of Rattigan's worst plays, Harliquinade, and frankly it doesn't set the bar very high.

"I wasn't intimidated in the slightest. It was a nice way of paying tribute to a writer whose best work I admire very much."

Anna Chancellor (Millie Crocker-Harris) and Nicholas Farrell (Andrew Crocker-Harris) in The Browning Version

He added: "Your youth becomes incredibly important to you as you get old and it comes back to you very clearly, and as soon as I thought 'great - I can write a play about my school days', it more or less wrote itself."

Hare's play is seen from the perspective of the students, while The Browning Version focuses on an unpopular Classics master, Mr Crocker-Harris (Farrell) and his unfaithful wife (Chancellor).

Chancellor's Bafta nomination is for her role as war correspondent Lix Storm in Abi Morgan's drama The Hour about the launch of the BBC's first topical news programme in 1956.

She's up against Maggie Smith (Downtown Abbey), Miranda Hart (Call The Midwife) and Monica Dolan (Appropriate Adult).

"It's a game isn't it," laughed the actress. "It's great but if you don't get nominated for an award it's fine too."

She revealed that in series two of The Hour, Lix Storm has a "very repressed" love story with a character played by Peter Capaldi.

Chancellor's co-stars in The Hour - Dominic West and Romola Garai - are also nominated for Baftas for other shows, Appropriate Adult (Dominic West) and The Crimson Petal and the White (Romola Garai).

David Hare, meanwhile, has been writing two more Page Eight television plays, with Bill Nighy as MI5 officer Johnny Worricker.

"I'm doing one where he's in exile and one where he returns. I'm very much looking forward to working with Bill Nighy and that wonderful group of actors again."

He hopes the dramas will begin shooting later this year.

<italic>South Downs and The Browning Version are at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 21 July.</italic>