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The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
In Praise of Love review – secrets and lies circle a family on the brink
Terence Rattigan distilled the unassailable emotional permafrost that settles between his upper middle-class English couples with a singular mastery. But this production shows his late work contains genuine warmth – and love – beneath the disappointments and dishonesties of married life. Longsuffering wife Lydia (Claire Price) seems stranded in her marriage to the pompous and hectoring Sebastian (Dominic Rowan) who – quite literally – cannot change a lightbulb without her assistance. When they are visited by successful American writer Mark (Daniel Abelson), who has always loved Lydia, the plot seems to promise a love triangle. But this play, written as part of a double bill in 1973, wrongfoots those expectations. It veers in several directions, from serious illness and impending death to father-son wrangles between Sebastian and Joey (Joe Edgar), who is an aspiring TV writer. Thrown into the mix is Lydia's 'outsider' status (she is Estonian) with talk of refugees as outsiders to 'Englishness' along with the lived memories of the Holocaust, as well as political debates that set Sebastian's champagne Marxism against Joey's embrace of the Liberal party. The play was said to be loosely inspired by Rex Harrison and his last (sixth) wife, Kay Kendall, who died two years after they were married, in 1959. The play creaks with female sacrifice that feels peculiarly of its time: Lydia lives in service to Sebastian, tending to his every need. And even when she suspects him of an affair, she still plans for his future welfare. Directed by Amelia Sears, the production does not try to disguise the datedness. This is a 1970s world of tiny black and white TV sets, drinks cabinets and dutiful wives. Staged four years before Rattigan died in 1977, it deals with impending death, but also the characteristic peering under the bonnet of a couple's secrets; Lydia with her illness, Sebastian with an off-stage female lover who might well be the coded homosexual partner often found in Rattigan's work. There is nervy humour and Price gives a delicate performance as Lydia, capturing the psychological subtleties of her part, while Rowan is sufficiently sledge-hammer as her boorish husband. Still, it is not as monumental a play as The Deep Blue Sea, also about the disenchantments of romance, nor is it as chamber-like as some of Rattigan's double-bills (such as Summer 1954). The parts of Joey and Mark feel like cogs to the plot, which itself is so busy that it dilutes emotional focus. But it is a tender work that leaves you with the picture of a family, fractious certainly, but loving too in their own way – and together until the end. Like so many Rattigan marriages, there are secrets and lies here but underneath there is a love that smoulders. At Orange Tree theatre, London, until 5 July
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
About The Deep Blue Sea
TAMSIN GREIG stars in Terence Rattigan's 1950's study of obsession and the destructive power of love in a new production originally presented at the Theatre Royal Bath. When you're stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea can sometimes look very inviting. In this powerful drama of passion versus loyalty, Hester Collyer, the daughter of a clergyman and wife of a judge is floundering in the closing stages of a hopeless affair. Freddie Page, her lover, a handsome but shallow ex-Battle of Britain pilot, is out of his depth in their relationship, overwhelmed by the strength of an emotion he is incapable of reciprocating… Olivier Award winner Tamsin Greig has been one of the country's best-loved stage and screen actresses in a career spanning four decades. She won the Olivier for Best Actress in 2007 for Much Ado About Nothing and has been nominated for The Little Dog Laughed and Women on the Verge of a Breakdown. The cast includes Tony Award nominee Finbar Lynch (Not About Nightingales, National Theatre, Girl From The North Country, Noel Coward Theatre). Director Lindsay Posner's recent highly acclaimed productions include the West End transfer of Noises Off and A View From The Bridge starring Dominic West. Hide
Daily Mail
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
PATRICK MARMION reviews The Deep Blue Sea at the Theatre Royal: Tale of romantic regret hidden by veil of primness
The Deep Blue Sea (Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London) Was there ever a play that craved intimacy like Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea? Starring Tamsin Greig, Rattigan's 1952 tale of Hester Collyer, a society lady who tries to kill herself after an adulterous affair, is a modern classic of romantic neuralgia. But for its emotional agonies to really torture us, I was hoping for a more intimate atmosphere than is provided by Lindsay Posner's respectable production, first seen in Bath last year. As ever, Greig is a powerful stage presence, catching Hester's shame and anguish at being abandoned by her pusillanimous playboy squeeze, Freddie (Hadley Fraser), a keen amateur golfer (the writing was on the wall). And yes, she mobilises an impressive sense of stultified post-war duty to keep calm and carry on. But the scene where she polishes Freddie's shoes, before he leaves her forever, feels more like a compliant mother seeing her son off to school than desperate self-abasement. Hiding behind a veil of primness and courtesy, we get only glimpses of the emotional lift shaft inside her – until we hear her terrified shrieks, like those of a wounded animal. Mostly, though, we see her character trying (and failing) to abide by the forbidding social conventions of her day. Those conventions are brought to bear with caring, patrician warmth by Nicholas Farrell (sporting a thick goatee) as her much older husband, who gets about in a chauffeur-driven Rolls. Hester's emotional declamation is instead facilitated by Finbar Lynch, as the scruffy, evasive, former doctor upstairs who saves her life and offers sympathetic counsel. The damp sock of a Ladbroke Grove flat where the play is set, with its peeling wallpaper, rusty fire place and prominent gas meter, could easily fetch £2million today. But our brave new world has little or no sense of the social costs that shape Hester's moral dilemmas. A more intimate staging might have helped us feel her pain more sharply. The Deep Blue Sea runs until June 21. Theatre skewers itself – but thanks to impeccable timing, no actors were harmed in the making of this comic masterpiece By Libby Purves Noises Off (New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich and touring) Rating: Michael Frayn's play about actors is always welcome: a comic masterpiece and loving study in theatre's own absurdity. The first act shows a final limping rehearsal for a hackneyed trouser-dropping farce. The second offers a view from backstage, halfway through the tour, as we hear the play continuing while watching the cast's jealousies and inadequacies creating mimed fury, mutual sabotage, violence — and desperation to keep the whisky bottle and the oldest veteran apart. The third is back onstage for a last performance which dissolves into helpless confusion. Its brilliance lies both in satirizing its own profession and in the remorseless rhythm of returning lines and rising hopelessness. The challenge of turning round the set — twice — is especially fascinating in Douglas RIntoul's touring production: it's in partnership with Hornchurch, Theatre By The Lake and Théatres de la Ville de Luxembourg. The latter's designer Clio Van Aerde has created some clever movable sets: without a curtain the audience very much enjoyed watching high-efficiency stagehands hauling it all around. Altogether it is considerable fun, handling all the physical jokes beautifully — George Kemp's tied-shoelace and downstairs tumble positively heroic — and Russell Richardson's drunken old ham Selsden is a joy. But they're all absolutely on-point and fearless. And goodness, in this play they have to be. The show runs in Ipswich to May 24, then moves to Queen's Theatre Hornchurch (May 28 - June 7); Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg (June 13 - 15) and Theatre by the Lake (June 25-July 26). Forget 'fair Verona'. Welcome to the Wild West, where Romeo and Juliet are about to meet at a hoedown… By Veronica Lee Romeo And Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe, London) Verdict: Giddy up Your reaction to being told that director Sean Holmes has given a Wild West setting to Shakespeare's tragedy about star-cross'd lovers might be 'Why?' But hold your horses... Holmes mines great comedy from the text, particularly in the first half, and not just because the sight of the warring Montagues and Capulets in cowboy boots and Stetsons, and the ladies in gingham — and line dancing — seems incongruous. But here they are, on a set by Paul Wills that would grace any Western: a simple wooden barn-type affair with swinging saloon doors and a loft space where a hoedown band plays. The frontier setting underlines how dangerous a place Verona could be, when choosing the wrong side in a family feud could mean a dagger in the heart — or here, a bullet in the chest. This is a pleasingly original take on the text, the knockabout comedy of the first half contrasting, and giving real heft, to the final scenes where those previously killed (or assumed dead, in Juliet's case) — Paris, Tybalt and Mercutio — appear to have come back to life on stage as we see the young lovers kill themselves. The frailty of human life is made abundantly clear. Rawaed Asde convinces as a hot-headed Romeo, one moment full of unrequited love for Rosaline, the next head over heels with her cousin Juliet, played here with verve by Lola Shalam. Great support is given by Michael Elcock as a swaggering Mercutio, Calum Callaghan as a menacing Tybalt and Jamie-Rose Monk as a wily Nurse. This is an unashamedly crowd-pleasing production — the large number of American students in on the night I saw it were completely wowed by it — but it's too long at three hours, and Holmes doesn't fully deliver on the bold concept. Until August 2 ( Funny, saucy, and totally gripping, 1536 tells the tale of one doomed Queen, three Essex girls…and a lot of men behaving badly By Georgia Brown 1536 (Almeida, North London) Verdict: It's a man's world In a week when the royal rift between the King and Prince Harry is being compared with another family at war — the Beckhams of Essex — a new play draws eloquent parallels between Henry VIII's murderous dispatch of Anne Boleyn and three ordinary Essex girls, who are also hapless victims of the patriarchy. Ava Pickett's debut play may have nothing new to say, but the way she tells it — using funny, authentic, anachronistic, intimate girl-talk, fizzing with swear words — is as accomplished as it is original. The play begins as news arrives from London that the Queen, now labelled the Great Whore, has been sent to the Tower. In nearby Colchester, suspicious husbands are setting their wives alight. These burning issues are picked over in a scorched field where Anna, the village beauty, has passionate sex with her posh lover; Mariella, the village midwife, washes bloodstained laundry and hangs it out to dry — and their more conventional friend, Jane, regularly wanders. 'Do you think she did it?' asks Jane. 'I wonder if he'll kill her?' muses Mariella. The characters are vibrantly drawn. Siena Kelly's Anna is vain, certainly, but also a sensualist, revelling in the power her desirability gives her — free loaves from the baker and endless attention, scarily careless that her reputation makes her unmarriageable. Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) is more worldly wise, her heart still bleeding for the love of her life, William, who married his social equal, who is now pregnant. Liv Hill's naif Jane, whose dowry makes her a catch, is resigned to a life of making babies and dinner for a kind man. Anna is then she discovers that her lover has proposed to her friend. Much of the play is talk, until in a shocking, slightly rushed climax, when it catches dramatic fire. But it never fails to grip. It has already won prizes, Lyndsey Turner's vibrant production and a trio of exceptional performances deserve more. Until June 7.
Times
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Give Terence Rattigan his own West End theatre, stage stars say
The vilification of one of Britain's greatest 20th-century playwrights, who fell out of fashion following the rise of the 'angry young men', needs to be redressed by naming a West End playhouse after him, acting luminaries have said. A Sir Terence Rattigan theatre would give the playwright the recognition he deserves for his influential works and go some way to correcting the wrongs inflicted on him, they said. David Suchet, who starred in Rattigan's Man and Boy 20 years ago, said the writer, who died in 1977 aged 66, had been 'hugely influential on British theatre', adding that he had been upset at learning of his mistreatment. Rattigan's earlier plays including 1942's Flare Path, The Winslow Boy in 1946 and The Deep Blue Sea
