The Deep Blue Sea
by Terence Rattigan
Directed by Paul Foster
Designed by Peter McKintosh
The Minerva Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre
Saturday 29th June 2019, 14.45
CAST:
Nancy Carroll- Hester Collyer
Hadley Fraser- Freddie Page
Gerald Kyd – Sir William Collyer
Denise Black – Mrs Elton
Matthew Cottle- Mr Miller
Ralph Davis – Philip Welch
Laurence Ubong Williams – Jackie Jackson
Helena Wilson – Anne Welch
Nancy Carroll as Hester Collyer
I reviewed the film of The Deep Blue Sea (LINKED), and that review mentions the Greta Saatchi as Hester Collyer version at Bath before this blog began. With David Hare’s Plenty at the Festival Theatre, Chichester is into emotional turmoil after World War II events. Chichester was close to the Battle of Britain airfields too.
The programme has an essay on Rattigan’s popularity and how suddenly it waned. I got through a year on 20th Century Theatre History in 1966-67 and Coward and Rattigan were a dismissive footnote (Fry and Eliot were “spit on the ground every time their name gets mentioned” but that might well be right!) The renewed interest in Rattigan dates from the 1990s and The Deep Blue Sea is central to that. It’s had major productions a number of times this century. Chichester last did the play in 2011 with Amanda Root and Anthony Calf (who is in Plenty ) and I wish I’d seen them.
I’ve seen the play on stage two or three times before, as well as the film. Glancing at the French’s Acting Edition play text before seeing it, I as struck by how incredibly detailed the stage directions and cast notes are. e.g. Philip Welch is “about 24 with round horn-rimmed glasses.” It’s a tendency I inclined to on film scripts and had long discussions with directors about the amount of detail. Generally, they don’t want to know about hair colour or clothes … that’s irritating. The best ones don’t mind details on movement. They’ll read them, and either follow them or consciously decide to improve them, or do other moves altogether.
The play it is well known, is the disguised tale of one of Rattigan’s own gay relationships, apparently inspired by the suicide of an ex-boyfriend, linking to Hester, so presumably Rattigan identified with the put-upon older partner, a greatly respected figure, Sir William, abandoned for a younger model.
The set: Nancy Carroll as Hester.
This production (like the film, and Bath) goes for a detailed set very much 1952, and very much as Rattigan would have wanted it. 1952 must be a very foreign country for younger audience members, especially when putting a shilling in the gas meter to obtain gas is such a major plot hinge, let alone both homosexuality and attempted suicide being imprisonable offences. The stage set of the seedy Ladbroke Grove flat has upstairs windows, three rear doors and vintage wallpaper and furniture. Ladbroke Grove flats looked much the same in 1969. I don’t think they’d changed the wallpaper or furniture. The stage is slightly raised, and surrounded by blackened debris fromWorld War II bombing raids. When the lights first go down, the lighting comes back up and initially only lights the shattered debris. We hoped this spell of darkness was where Nancy Carroll got on stage swathed in a blanket as Hester, rather than having to lie there … we could see the body shape … for 15 or 20 minutes while the house filled.
The play opens with the proverbial noises off, as the landlady Mrs Elton (Denise Black) knocks on the door, joined by the voices of the couple from another flat, Anne and Philip Welch (Helena Wilson and Ralph Davis). They can smell gas. Mrs Elton uses her pass key and they find Hester, rattling with aspirins, comatose next to the gas fire. But the gas meter had run out cutting off the gas supply. NB- switching on an incandescent bulb electric light in a gas filled room should not be tried at home. Rattigan was aware of this in an era of leaky gas pipes … he has Mrs Elton opening the curtains to let sunlight stream into the room. I’d guess LEDs are safer.
Nancy Carroll as Hester, Helena Wilson as Anne, Ralph Davis as Philip
Mrs Elton calls in Mr Miller (Matthew Cottle), a German bookmaker’s clerk to revive Hester. But is Miller a doctor? He gives an emetic injection and knows what he’s doing. Meanwhile, Anne, who is somewhat nosey, finds the suicide note addressed to Freddie, who they thought her husband. Mrs Elton reveals all. Hester is not married to Freddie Page, but to a senior judge, Sir William Collyer. She left him ten months earlier and fled to Canada with Freddie, a war hero. Battle of Britain Spitfire boy. DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross). Freddie was then a test pilot. They have returned after a drunken Freddie crash-landed a plane he was testing. Philip Welch is assigned to phone Sir William and tell him about Hester’s suicide attempt.
Hadley Fraser as Freddie Page, Gerald Kyd as Sir William, Nancy Carroll as Hester Collyer
The ply reveals the history of their relationships, and Freddie turns out to be a total bastard. Hadley Fraser plays a powerful Freddie, no handlebar moustaches, but a man who is self-obsesed. He had forgotten her birthday, but though they have no money rent, throws her £3 as he needs the other £5 for his dinner out.
It’s All About Me! Hadley Fraser as Freddie, Laurence Ubong Williams as Jackie Jackson
Freddie has a nasty temper too, and bemoans his luck (the suicide attempt is inconvenient to him) to his RAF pal, Jackie Jackson (Laurence Ubong Williams). He is too scared to collect his things from the flat, and sends Philip to collect them. A scene of domestic poignancy is when Hester fills his suitcase- everything neatly folded – by her of course. Women take charge of clothing. She holds his flying jacket to her face. Then when he does return, she has to polish his shoes for him. It’s how he sees her. In the end he leaves to get a job in Brazil.
Hadley Fraser as Freddie Page, DFC.
Gerald Kyd is Sir William Collyer- one later little shock is when Philip (a Home Office civil servant) addresses Hester correctly as Lady Collyer. Again, this Sir William is a sympathetic character as he should be if Rattigan empathized with the role. In the past he’s been over-played as pompous and snotty.
Gerald Kyd as Sir William Collyer
The major virtue of this production is its sincerity. The characters are played as real, not as caricatures. Yes, they speak RP. Yes, Mrs Elton has a London accent but is NOT Gor, luv a duck, strike me dead, guv’nor and Mr Miller is German, but it’s all restrained, subtle. They never fall into somewhat camp exaggeration … which has happened every other time I’ve seen it. The play is often at the extreme of “Rattiganesque” in its dialogue, which is not a compliment -not all his plays are as clichéd on Fighter Boys cheery chap and cheerful loveable Cockney. The film version went ludicrously overboard on it. After the RAF characters in Flare Path and While The Sun Shines I was surprised that Rattigan mentions RAF slang disparagingly twice in this play, as a sign of being stuck forever in the summer of 1940. Rattigan, in spite of already being a famous playwright, served as an RAF tail gunner in the war which inspired Flare Path. He knew his RAF banter.
Nancy Carroll as Hester, Gerald Kyd as Sir William
Hester is telling Sir William how she first got involved with Freddie. The Collyers had taken a villa at Sunningdale for the golf. (An aside, Rattigan thought much the same about fanatic golfers as I do):
HESTER: I didn’t even think he was particularly good-looking, and that RAF slang used to irritate me slightly, I remember. It’s such an anachronism now, isn’t it – as dated as gadzooks and odds my life?
COLLYER: He does it for effect, I suppose.
HESTER: No, he does it because his life stopped in nineteen-forty. He loved nineteen-forty. Freddie’s never really been happy since he left the RAF.
Matthew Cottle as Mr Miller
We spent part of the journey home on Mr Miller. Matthew Cottle’s portrayal of Miller was outstanding. In the past, the character has become almost a funny bit of foreigner light relief. Here the character is sympathetic, dispensing quite wisdom. We were speculating on why he was struck off. We know he came to Britain in 1937 or1938, and spent time on the Isle of Man which would be internment.
MRS ELTON: Just after he’d come here, there was a letter for him addressed to “Kurt Müller, M.D.” – and then of course I remembered the case, because there’d been quite a lot in the papers about it … He goes and works every night in a hospital for infantile paralysis- unpaid of course. That was his speciality before – apparently he was working on dome sort of treatment …
HESTER: Won’t he ever get back on the Medical Register?
MRS ELTON: Oh, no, not a hope …… what he did wasn’t – well- the sort of thing people forgive very easily. Ordinary normal people, I mean.
There are hints that Rattigan did a draft “homosexual version” of the play, not that one was ever found (unlike Separate Tables which had two versions of the Major’s arrest). Those who hint that, suggest Mr Miller’s “crime” was homosexuality. It was illegal then, as was suicide, but was it a reason to be struck off as a doctor? When I saw an extremely German version of Miller years ago, I thought he might be connected with wartime experiments (though he was here in 1938), We also speculated on abortionists, also illegal in 1952. One thought this time, what with him working with disabled children, was the Jimmy Savile factor. Whatever, the portrayal here is fascinatingly enigmatic. That’s the point. If Rattigan had wanted other than enigma, he’d have written it in.
Denise Black as Mrs Elton – note Hester’s paintings on the wall
The other area we discussed afterwards was Hester’s paintings. She tries to sell them, but ends up giving two away. My companion pointed out how often women’s painting (or embroidery, or any craft work) is dismissed by men as a hobby. Miller points to a painting she did at seventeen as different and displaying real talent. There might be an unspoken contrast to her later paintings. The paintings on display are an important design decision in the play. You have to think 1952, but these trees and landscapes reminded me of working in a museum and having to hang the two hundred contributions to an annual competition from local amateur art clubs.There is a choice, though one has to look different – I’d say stronger in line, more dramatic. Here, she’s a not very good painter.
Rattigan has been gradually rehabilitated for me as the years roll by and I see more good productions. We agreed this was the best Deep Blue Sea we have seen, and a production which restored the power of the play, and very much because every actor was so good, and they worked together so well.
****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
5 star
Fiona Mountford, Standard *****
4 star
Michael Billington, Guardian ****
Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times ****
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage ****
What a play this is! Watching Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, which premiered in 1952, it now seems impossible to imagine that an entire generation of angry young men once denounced its author as dusty and irrelevant. Perhaps it was because they were men. Because in the right hands, it emerges – for all its period setting – as an urgent and relevant study of women’s desires and ambitions. Not to mention the destructive dangers of love, for men and for women.
Cindy Marcolini, Broadway World ****
3 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ***
Rosemary Waugh, The Stage ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
TERENCE RATTIGAN PLAYS ON THIS BLOG:
All On Her Own by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Flare Path, by Terence Rattigan, 2015 Tour, at Salisbury Playhouse
Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Ross by Terence Rattigan, Chichester Festival Theatre 2016
Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan, Salisbury Playhouse
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan (FILM VERSION)
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan, National 2016, NT Live 2020
While The Sun Shines by Terence Rattigan, Bath, 2016
French Without Tears, by Terence Rattigan, English Touring Theatre 2016
NANCY CARROLL
Young Marx, by Richard Bean & Clive Coleman, Bridge Theatre 2017
Woyzeck, by Buchmer, OLd Vic, 2017
The Magistrate, NT live
HADLEY FRASER
The Winter’s Tale, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Harlequinade by Terence Rattigan, Kenneth Branagh Company 2015
Coriolanus, NT Live
MATTHEW COTTLE
The Chalk Garden, by Enid Bagnold, Chichester 2018
Neighbourhood Watch, by Alan Ayckbourn, Bath 2012
Quatermaine’s Terms, by Simon Gray, Brighton, 2013
Communicating Doors by Alan Ayckbourn, Menier Chocolate Factory, 2015
LAURENCE UBONG WILLIAMS
The Watsons, by LauraWade, Chichester 2018
RALPH DAVIS
Timon of Athens, RSC 2018
King Lear, Globe 2017 (Edmund)
Tamburlaine, RSC 2018
HELENA WILSON
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Old Vic 2017
Peter Viney's Blog 