Latest news with #TheDeepBlueSea
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
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.
New European
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
This role will win Tamsin Greig a best actress Olivier award
In theatre and in our world generally, there is a visceral horror of silence that now seems to be more pronounced than ever. Given what's happening around us, maybe we just don't want too much time to dwell upon things. Even some of my oldest friends, it so happens, have started to babble inanities over lunches and dinners. Lindsay Posner, the director of what might be called a radically traditional revival of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, understands, however, that silence can be used to devastating effect, certainly on a stage. He allows his audience quite a few moments of silence to contemplate the full horror of Hester Collyer's life after she made an unsuccessful bid to end it in the opening scene. Hester has broken up with her dull but decent husband,played by Nicholas Farrell, and is living with a feckless but charismatic young drunkard (Hadley Fraser). As their relationship inevitably disintegrates, she has to understand how she needs to focus on a point in her life that's 'beyond hope,' which is to say come to terms with reality. There is nothing terribly special about Hester – all of us know people like her and some may well see aspects of themselves in her character – and that's what makes the piece so powerful. Rattigan was almost certainly writing about his own troubled private life in the piece – in a more repressive time, he had to make the principals heterosexual, but, as a gay man, he knew the sense of despair about love and loss were just the same – and this is what gives the piece its punch. Tamsin Greig as Hester heads an exceptionally strong ensemble cast – I'll put money on her for best actress in the next Olivier awards – but Fraser, who I remember as a musical star in his younger days, is her equal on stage, capturing very well the inner turmoil of her youthful boyfriend. Farrell is on customarily great form, too, and Finbar Lynch, as a seedy, disbarred doctor tending to Hester, turns out to be a fine old scene-stealer. Posner directs with due reverence to Rattigan and it succeeds as a production precisely because of this, and, of course, the great acting. We've playwrights like Rattigan to thank for helping to make generation of theatre-goers emotionally literate, and it's pleasing, after seeing James Dacre's excellent double bill of his plays Table Number Seven and The Browning Version down in Chichester, to now see the old boy making a comeback in the West End.
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
Telegraph
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Tamsin Greig: Matt LeBlanc never spoke about Matthew Perry but... you knew something was going on
Tamsin Greig is showing off her hair. She recently had it shaved into a punky quiff for her role in Sally Wainwright's forthcoming television comedy Riot Women and liked the shorter style so much, she's decided to keep it. 'It's taken me 58 years to realise that tapering my hairline actually looks better for my head shape,' she says, skimming a hand across the cobble-and-flint coloured bristles on the back of her neck. 'Someone once asked me about going grey,' she continues. 'I said, 'I have grey hair and I live with it. Some people don't want to live with it. That's fine.'' She stretches out the final word for comic effect. 'Everyone gets grey hair!' But enough about hair. We've met to talk about Terence Rattigan's 1952 classic The Deep Blue Sea. Greig is playing Hester Collyer, its wretched heroine, who has left her husband, a judge, for Freddie, a former RAF pilot, who turns out to be boozy and feckless. When Lindsay Posner's production premiered in Bath last year, ahead of its imminent West End run, Greig received excellent reviews. It's a wonderful play, steeped in the repressed anguish of war-traumatised England, and in Hester, it provides one of the great female roles in 20th-century theatre. For Greig, the play 'is about self-value. Hester has abdicated her own agency in the service of some sort of male ideal, either as the society wife of a wealthy establishment judge or as the lover of this exciting, glamorous, romantic hero. So it's about navigating that loss of selfhood, and finding the way back.' Does she think that the world Rattigan's plays inhabit – all stiff upper lips around the drinks cabinet – now belongs to a bygone age? Well, she says, 'presenting well' remains an aspect of the British psyche, 'regardless of class'. And Rattigan is very good at exposing the dislocation between what's seen and what isn't. She says it reminds her of 'that lovely line' in Alan Bennett's 1991 play The Madness of George III when, after the lord chancellor says to the ailing king, 'Your Majesty seems more yourself,' he replies, 'I have always been myself, even when I was ill. Only now I seem myself. That is the important thing. I have remembered how to seem.' Greig smiles, 'Because 'to seem' is to save other people from the messiness of the self. But it's also true we are living in a time of self-exposure, particularly among the younger generation, on social media. If you are not expressing some kind of traumatised past, or some sort of 'authentic self', then you risk not getting enough views. And I think that can get us into some tricky corners.' The late Helen McCrory played Hester Collyer to devastating effect at the National Theatre in 2016, but the role plays to Greig's strengths, too, as an actress of subtlety and range. She is known to millions from her television comedy – Black Books, Green Wing, Episodes, Friday Night Dinner – and, since 1991, as the voice of Debbie Aldridge in The Archers. But theatre has always been where she has produced her most interesting and surprising work: a gender-switched Malvolia in Twelfth Night at the National in 2017; a prickly constituency agent in James Graham's political comedy Labour of Love. She knows some people think of her first and foremost as a comic actress, but, in truth, few actresses straddle the divide as nimbly as she does. 'After Green Wing, when I went back to the theatre after a decade away, there was a bit of, 'Ooh, can she [still] do it? It would be great if it was a car crash,'' she says. 'But I had done a lot of theatre before all those more 'seen' comedies, so going back on stage was never about having to prove myself.' Although, she adds, 'When I first went back, I wasn't great at it.' After the first preview of Much Ado About Nothing in 2006, in which Greig played Beatrice, her husband, the actor Richard Leaf, told her, 'Yes, you were great, but no one could hear you. Perhaps speak a bit louder next time?' She went on to win an Olivier Award for her performance. As for Riot Women, it sounds like, well, a riot – exactly the sort of edgy comedy drama that rarely gets commissioned these days. Its executive producer Roanna Benn recently said it wouldn't have been made without Wainwright – the superstar creator of Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax – attached. In Riot Women, Greig plays one of five middle-aged women who form a punk band to raise money for charity and discover that, actually, they are quite good at it. 'They are women of a certain age, they all have shared physiological experiences, they've all experienced heartbreak – and running through it all is the wildness of punk music,' says Greig. (She admits that, 'When I first got the email and read, confidential, Sally Wainwright, I was so thrilled, I threw my phone across the floor.') But she's keen that Riot Women is not mistaken for a menopause comedy. 'Weirdly, I've just been doing a play at the Donmar Warehouse in which I played a daughter in crisis because she is going through the menopause'– Backstroke, by Anna Mackmin – 'but it's now being taken much more seriously than it used to be, which is great. I cried when I watched Davina McCall's documentaries' – Sex, Myths and the Menopause, in 2021; Sex, Mind and the Menopause, the following year – 'because for the first time it felt as though something was being recognised.' But, she says, it would feel 'like a dismissal' to define Riot Women with the M-word, 'partly because it's just a small bit of it, but also because people go, 'Oh, OK, yawn.' We were even thinking can we call it Riot Women? Because does that mean 50 per cent of the population are going to think it's not for them? Although if it was Riot Men, everyone would watch it. So it's tricky.' Greig grew up in Kilburn, north-west London, with a notably older father, who stayed at home to bring up her and her two sisters, while their mother, a secretary, went out to work. 'My husband did a similar thing,' she points out; Leaf helped bring up their three now- grown-up children while Greig pursued her career. That career has been unusually varied; in the past few years, she has veered towards more villainous roles – none more so than Cecilia, the hard-as-nails arcade proprietor in the Sexy Beast television series – although, as she says, 'The characters I have become known for tend to be more accessible and relatable.' One of her more loveable characters was Bev, who was trying to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood alongside her husband (Stephen Mangan), in Episodes, the BBC comedy in which she starred opposite Matt LeBlanc. Did he ever talk about his troubled Friends co-star Matthew Perry? 'Never. Matt knew that [as a member of the Friends cast] he was one of six people who had experienced a particular slice of life that no one else in the world ever would. So he always honoured his friendship with Perry. But you only have to watch Friends to see a man who keeps changing from series to series. You know something is going on there.' She pauses, as if wondering whether to say more. 'It's difficult to answer, because people are so interested in those six people who are so beyond our understanding and yet so beloved. But I loved working with Matt, he was always ready and well-prepared.' Greig has said before that she was never likely to make it big in Hollywood because she always refused to have any cosmetic work done to her face. At this year's Oscars, the red carpet was pleasingly dominated by a parade of veteran female talent. Yet some of the more baby-smooth faces and sharply-contoured body shapes on display prompted debate about the lengths to which some actresses are going in order to preserve their youth. Greig, whose own face is lively, clever and finely angled, finds it fascinating. 'I'm curious about why people chose such different paths. Because there are people like Harriet Walter, who is absolutely brilliant in Succession and Ted Lasso, who hasn't gone down that particular path and who is mesmerising and gorgeous. People chose to do different things with their bodies for such personal reasons, which is their own choice,' she says. 'And I'm choosing to look like this.'
