The Deep Blue Sea
The tried and sometimes true conveyor belt between Bath Theatre Royal to Theatre Royal Haymarket continues rumble on, bringing big old fashioned productions of big old fashioned plays with big name actors. Terence Rattigan's maudlin masterpiece The Deep Blue Sea with Tamsin Greig as tragic heroine Hester Collyer follows in the wake of A View From the Bridge (Dominic West) and The Score (Brian Cox) and lands somewhere between the two.
It's never much of a chore to see this play, one of the most well made of the well made plays, with its perfect substructure of unspoken feeling and roiling passion. But it's also a play that summons a long history of brilliant performances. The most recent big one, the National Theatre production in 2016 with Helen McCrory, was pretty great.
As for this, it isn't bad at all. Even though there's nothing wrong with the direction by Lindsay Posner (who also did A View From the Bridge in a similarly perfectly good way) or the rundown set by Peter McKintosh, or the day-to-night lighting by Paul Pyant, not much particularly stands out either. It all does the job – all gets out of the way of the play, and maybe that's the best thing. Let the play speak for itself.
Tamsin Greig takes on the role of Hester, former wife of a judge. She's now shacked up with a young and sexy test pilot and has tried to kill herself when he forgets her birthday. Across the course of a long career in lighter and comic roles, Grieg has often brought unexpected depth and warmth. Here it's the other way around: it needs depth first and comedy second, and while Greig finds a few shattering moments – and it's great to see her go to some extreme places in her sadness and her ferocity – her Hester lacks unity. She plays every interaction on its own terms: now comic, now tragic, now sharp or desperate. The result is a hundred Hesters rather than one.
There isn't a note wrong from Hadley Fraser as roguish Freddy, seducer of Hester, who loves her but makes her miserable and drinks too much. Fraser's got such incredible presence. He drapes himself over the set like he's lived there forever. He's matched by a brilliantly upstanding Nicholas Farrell, Hester's high court judge husband, who offers her a sensible, reasonable and stifling life in high society. And it's a weirdly funny production of a usually sullen play. Selina Cadell finds a laugh in most of her lines as nosy housekeeper Mrs Elton.
Posner often comes close to the solidity and quiet excellence of his View From the Bridge of last year, but it's not always sustained. The result is a perfectly decent production of a pretty much perfect play.
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Time Out
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Ncuti Gatwa regenerates into Olly Alexander as the NT's ‘Importance of Being Earnest' transfers to London's West End
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BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Olly Alexander lands West End role in The Importance of Being Earnest
Singer and actor Olly Alexander has said he has "come into a different space in my life", as he announced a new West End stage role after recently parting ways with his record star will appear in the National Theatre's production of The Importance of Being Earnest when it transfers to the West End in will be his first acting role since It's A Sin, Channel 4's acclaimed 2021 drama about the Aids crisis, for which he was nominated for a Bafta Award."I'd recently been thinking that I'd love to act again," he told BBC News. "I'd come to the end of my record contract, and I have a bit more breathing space to try a few different things and not feel, oh, well I have to deliver an album to my record label." Alexander will take over from Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa, who starred in The Importance of Being Earnest when it opened at the National Theatre in 2024. He will play Algernon when the production transfers to the Noel Coward Theatre in London."What's not to love?" Alexander asked. "It's such a brilliant play, Oscar Wilde's most celebrated comedy. I saw the National production and thought it was fantastic, and this opportunity came along and I jumped at the chance." Alexander shot to fame when his band Years & Years won the BBC Sound of 2015 poll and went on to have hits such as King and Shine, and score a number one later went solo, although continued to perform as Years & Years, and scored another top-charting album in 2021. He has performed with Sir Elton John and Kylie Minogue, and was the UK's Eurovision entrant last after his most recent album Polari, released in February, reached number 17, Alexander announced his departure from his record label."They aren't dropping me, they just aren't renewing my contract," he explained at the time. "It's OK and honestly for the best. I've been on a pretty terrible deal for 10 years. It's time I do something new. But I'll still make music in the future."Reflecting on his first decade as a pop star, Alexander told the BBC: "With music, there's an intensity to the way I've been working and putting albums out, promoting and touring. I definitely want to take the foot off the gas in terms of that intensity." He still occasionally works on music, but has "not been putting pressure on myself... I just do what feels good and feel very lucky that I have this other strand of acting that I'm able to explore".Alexander said he felt he had "learned so much" over the last decade about the way he likes to work. "But for me," he continued, "a lot of the reason I think the [music] industry has changed so much is that it's set on this model which is very antiquated now, and it's not kept pace with the times. "Lots of artists have this direct link with their audience via social media. They want their music out quickly. The whole model of promoting it - three singles into an album, then you tour the album, then move onto the next one - it's not really working like it did."He noted that record labels could historically make an album a success because they were "able to pour a lot of money into something"."They just can't do that now. Everything has changed. But I think that is exciting for lots of reasons, and it is an exciting place for artists, even though it's harder to break through." He concluded: "If I go back into it, it'll be because I think it's fun and something I want to do, and not think too much about how it's going to perform. "That's pretty much how I try to always feel, but you're in an environment where you have a lot of other stakeholders, and people telling you it needs to be this or that, and there's always that tension." For now, he is focusing on performed in 1895, The Importance of being Earnest follows two male friends who adopt fictional personas. The farcical comedy unfolds with mistaken identities and makes generous use of clever wordplay."In a nutshell, it's a comedy about two quite ridiculous young men and the double lives they lead," Alexander explained. "They do that to avoid their social obligations, and they both invent these aliases called Ernest, while they try and woo and marry these two young women. "But really, it's a comedy that skewers society's expectations, makes fun of class and what society expects of us, and what roles we're expected to perform." 'Delightful mischief' The previous production of the show, starring Gatwa, received a positive reception from critics. "There is an elegance to the nudge-wink references and it is a production with just the right amount of delightful mischief," wrote the Guardian's Arifa Akbar in a four-star Daily Mail's Patrick Marmion awarded five stars, describing the "sparkling new production" as a "witty reboot"."Yes, liberties are taken," he said. 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The Guardian
2 days ago
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