South Downs/ The Browning Version, Harold Pinter Theatre, London’s West End, May 2012

Terence Rattigan’s excellent short play The Browning Version is set in a boys’ boarding school, and for the first half of the evening a new play by David Hare, commissioned the Rattigan estate, has a similar setting.

The Browning Version is about one of the masters, and Hare’s counterpoint focusses on one of the boys. In both plays an act of kindness is the fulcrum lifting the main protagonist out of the tramlines of his sad, yet very scholarly, existence.

Alex Lawther as the clever boy, all images Johan Persson

In Hare’s South Downs a pedantic English master, beautifully played by Andrew Woodall, extols the genius of Alexander Pope, saying “only within a cage do we find freedom”. Indeed a firm foundation and attention to detail provides a basis for true creativity, something that began going awry in the 70s after Hare left school. We still suffer the consequences, and although intellectual rigour is now making a comeback, it has a long way to go.

Tea and cake for Blakemore

Yet here in class is a very clever boy, Blakemore, brilliantly played by young Alex Lawther, who challenges the master in order to protect a boy he wants as his friend. Blakemore is disturbed, but finds it impossible to talk to his housemaster, Rev Eric Dewley, a man of the Church of England who believes in consubstantiation rather than trans-substantiation, but isn’t really sure about that. It’s a clever play, with Dewley very well portrayed by Nicholas Farrell, himself the focus of Rattigan’s play in the second half of the evening. Something needs to happen to Blakemore, and Anna Chancellor as the actress mother of one of the prefects gives him tea and sympathy, faulting him for being unable to dissemble. This is something Rattigan himself was extremely good at when he was at school at Harrow, yet in the end Blakemore manages a transformation, and we move on to Rattigan’s play.

The term Browning Version refers to a translation of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon by Robert Browning, and the dry-as-dust Classics master, Crocker-Harris is a brilliant scholar who is teaching the boys to read it, in the original of course. This is pretty tough stuff. Yet it’s not the boys who are suffering, but Crocker-Harris himself, superbly portrayed by Nicholas Farrell. He is recovering from a heart attack caused by the chronic stress of an apparently charming but deceptive wife who hates him, a headmaster who is happy to see the back of him, and his own despair at casting scholarly pearls before swine.

Nicholas Farrell as Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version

He’s on track to leave the school — without even a pension — and go to work at a crammer. Could anything be more absurd? Here is a man who should be teaching classical texts at university level, yet to the lower fifth he’s simply the Crock, a beast to beware of. Oh, he understands his position all right. A ‘hen-pecked husband’ to an ‘unsatisfied wife’, the butt of contempt or fear by others. But what can he do about it?

Anna Chancellor as the wife

“Rules are rules” he responds when the disturbingly disappointing news comes down from the trustees about his pension. The pompous fraud of a headmaster, played with carefree abandon by Andrew Woodall, almost seems to relish giving him the bad news, coupled with a request that he diminish himself by allowing someone else to speak last at the end of year celebrations. His dry speech with a hyper-scholarly joke or two is all prepared, and he accedes to the headmaster’s proposal.

Yet suddenly an act of kindness by one of the boys turns everything on its head. This is vintage Rattigan, and I was longing to know what his new speech might be — we never do, of course.

But we do know that precision and attention to detail by a clever scholar can work wonders, as long as he can divest himself of the psychological baggage weighing him down. What might Crocker-Harris have achieved with a less spiteful wife? And how much better might this performance have been if Anna Chancellor as the wife had delivered the main line in the play facing the audience rather than stage rear? In this fascinating and moving portrayal of the dry scholar by Nicholas Farrell we find hope that the precision of Greek translation can once again give huge pleasure and revitalise his life.

These two plays together yield a wonderful evening of theatre. Performances continue until July 21 — for details click here.

The Deep Blue Sea, Chichester Festival Theatre, August 2011

A shilling in the meter, for those of us who remember, was essential to keep the gas and electricity going. Awfully annoying when the money runs out unexpectedly, but in this case it saves Hester’s life. She took sleeping pills and put on the gas deliberately.

Collyer and Hester, all photos Manuel Harlan

As Mrs. Page she complains about being a ‘golf widow’, but when she’s found half gassed to death it turns out she’s really Mrs. Collyer, estranged wife of the judge, Sir William, superbly played by Anthony Calf. He’d no idea where she was living, but as soon as he’s told he comes round immediately. He still cares, very much, but has pretended not to, “I thought my indifference would hurt your vanity”. At the end of Act I we find out why she chose this moment to commit suicide. We also meet her lover Freddie Page, beautifully played by John Hopkins. He’s an ex-test pilot, ex-RAF, with good looks and charm that exceed by a long way his ability to earn a living.

Freddie Page

The ultimate failure of their relationship is inevitable, but the ending remains very much in doubt at the start of Act III, which was prefaced by music from one of Britten’s four sea interludes. Mr. Miller, the ex-doctor, very ably portrayed by Pip Donaghy, is the key to hope. He seems to understand her, “Most people commit suicide to escape. You do so because you feel you’re unworthy”. There is more where that comes from, “To live without hope is to live without despair”. Donaghy was excellent, as was Susan Tracy as Mrs. Elton the landlady. She is the epitome of common sense in this wonderful play by Terence Rattigan.

The trouble for me was that I didn’t really care whether Hester lived or died. As Mr. Miller says, “The purpose of life is to live”, but she seemed to lack a vitality that must have attracted Freddie in the first place. Amanda Root played Hester very naturally as a precise and sensitive woman caught up in an affair she thinks means everything, and you can see why she falls for Freddie, though not why he falls for her. That would seem to be an essential ingredient, and while the director Philip Franks did a terrific job with Rattigan’s Nijinsky this didn’t achieve the same theatrical impact.

Mr. Miller and Hester

A movie of this story starring Rachel Weisz as Hester is due out later this year. In the meantime performances at Chichester continue until September 3 — for details click here.

Rattigan’s Nijinsky, Chichester Festival Theatre, August 2011

Malcom Sinclair as Rattigan, all photos Manuel Harlan

This is not just a play for ballet fans or anyone who has heard of Diaghilev or Nijinsky, it’s also for Rattigan fans, as Terence Rattigan himself appears on stage, brilliantly played by Malcolm Sinclair. He interacts with the characters in his own drama, particularly Diaghilev, and at the end of Part I we hear the following dialogue between them. Diaghilev: Where are we now?  Rattigan: Thursday, May 29^th, 1913, the first night of The Rite of Spring.

This famous premiere gave the Paris audience two creations that many found hard to take: Nijinsky’s revolutionary choreography, and Stravinsky’s extraordinary score. The theatre was in an uproar and police had to be called to keep some sort of order, while Nijinsky was backstage shouting out counts to dancers who could barely hear the orchestra for all the noise. It remains the most riotous premiere in all of ballet.

Jonathan Hyde as Diaghilev

We know of course who Stravinsky was, Diaghilev too, but who exactly was Nijinsky? This play shows him as a boy applying to the Czar’s Imperial Ballet School. He’s small and was almost rejected out of hand, but his jumps were amazing, and he was the first person to do an entrechat dix. Not a six — “Any carthorse can do a six“, says Diaghilev — but a dix (a jump where the feet are interchanged in the air, with beats, five times). But technical virtuosity aside, Nijinsky was a creative genius whose first ballet, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune to Debussy’s music of the same name was a sensation of sensuality.

In this brilliant new play by Nicholas Wright, based on a screenplay by Rattigan, we see some of the original steps for Faun, along with Rite of Spring and Petrushka. And there’s music too: snatches of these ballets and Firebird. It’s all immensely watchable.

Nijinsky had an extraordinary instinct for dance. He was the first male dancer to take a solo bow, and he talks excitedly about how a woman threw a diamond tiara to him, and he tossed it back. So what went wrong? Rattigan endeavours to tell us. He talks to his mother who recalls seeing Nijinsky in Petrushka, “He lollopped … like a puppet”. “He is a puppet”. But Mrs. Rattigan is non-plussed, and when her son tells her Nijinsky was sacked, her response “Russians are so emotional”, shows she doesn’t really get it, and she wonders why her son has never found the right woman to marry.

This is the key. It’s why Rattigan refused to allow the BBC to put on the play they’d commissioned. He received a visit from Nijinsky’s widow, Romola who knew perfectly well that her husband was bisexual, but threatened Rattigan that if he brought to light the relationship between Nijinsky and Diaghilev then she would out him as “a pervert and a man of bestial proclivities”. He couldn’t bear to be recognised as homosexual because it would overshadow his work, so he backed off. In this play we see how Nijinsky was manipulated, not least by Romola herself. She schemes to make him her husband, and later takes him to see the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who diagnoses schizophrenia, a term he coined himself.

Faye Castelow as Romola and Joseph Drake as Nijinsky

There is also underhand scheming by others, including Diaghilev, brilliantly portrayed by Jonathan Hyde, who also played Rattigan’s BBC producer Cedric Messina. In body, Hyde looked more like the real life Massine than Diaghilev, but that is a minor point — his characterisation was excellent, and we are left wondering whether Diaghilev really wanted to rid himself of Nijinsky. Joseph Drake was wonderful as this extraordinary almost other-worldly dancer who believed it was God who helped him perform. Drake also played Donald the young hotel worker who fancies Rattigan. He was immensely likeable in both roles, a contrast to Faye Castelow was eminently dislikeable as his wife, the young Romola, with Susan Tracy equally dislikeable as the widow, as well as doubling up as Rattigan’s charmingly superficial mother. Lovely portrayal of the choreography by Emma Harris and Ellie Robertson.

This is not just worth seeing — it’s a must see for anyone with the slightest interest in ballet, and the creative team led by director Philip Franks and designer Mike Britton have done a wonderful job.

Performances continue until September 3 — for details click here.

Cause Célèbre, The Old Vic, London, March 2011

A young man kills his lover’s husband in a fit of jealousy. Should he hang? This is 1935 when the death penalty was mandatory for a murder conviction of this sort but the public was unduly sympathetic because the wife, Alma had carried on with him under her husband’s roof, and presumably wanted her husband, Francis Rattenbury out of the way. He was not an altogether nice man — after leaving his first wife he had the heat and lights turned off in their home, and flaunted his affair with his future second wife, the 27-year old Alma Pakenham.

The husband’s nasty streak is, however, not the point in this Rattigan play, which deals with the illicit relationship between Alma and her chauffeur, along with the court case, a cause célèbre in 1935. This frames everything towards the end, allowing us to see what really happened. Times have changed, of course, but the public’s prurient interest in personal scandal is timeless, and well expressed in this, Rattigan’s last play.

Anne-Marie Duff, photos by Johan Persson

Anne-Marie Duff as Alma Rattenbury was utterly convincing as a charmingly batty woman who lived life to the full. She probably wasn’t very bright, saying in court that she had no sex with her husband because, “the flesh was willing but the spirit was weak”, but then her lover was none too bright either, thinking he could get off by claiming to be on cocaine. The brightest person in the play is probably O’Connor the barrister, brilliantly played by Nicholas Jones. Add to that Niamh Cusack as Edith Davenport, portraying a fiercely judgemental woman who became the leader of the jury, and Lucy Robinson as her friend Stella Morrison, who takes a large, ultimately losing bet on the outcome, and here was the germ of a superb cast. Ms. Robinson’s cut glass accent was absolutely of the time, and Niamh Cusack was convincingly earnest in her possessive relationship with her son, her strict avoidance of her estranged husband, and her jury role as a key player in the verdict. These wonderful actors allowed Anne-Marie Duff to carry off the role of the adorable and infuriating Alma with tremendous spirit.

Niamh Cusack with Simon Chandler as her estranged husband

At the time of these events, Alma was 39 and her lover was 18, though in this production he looked older than that. The large age difference was one of the things that shocked the public, who saw her as the dominant partner. But as Rattigan’s Alma points out to the judge, it’s the younger person who has control in this situation. Thirty-nine can be a desperate age for some women, and had the age difference been the other way, the home secretary might not have intervened after the sentence. As it was the young chauffeur lived “a quiet life” until he died in 2000, aged 83.

The director, Thea Sharrock was also responsible for the National Theatre’s excellent revival of Rattigan’s After the Dance last year, and here again we have a fine production with designs by Hildegard Bechtler. I loved the lighting by Bruno Poet, which at times brought various characters from darkness to light, and vice versa — this was particularly good during the court scenes because the Old Vic is a cavernous theatre with a huge stage, and the lighting helped to create a useful intimacy.

The play runs until June 11 — for more information, click here for more details on the Old Vic’s website.

Flare Path, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London’s West End, March 2011

“Don’t worry, skipper will get us home again . . . and you have to pretend you’re not afraid”, so speaks the tail gunner, a role that Terence Rattigan himself played for real in World War II. This play is based on his own experience, and gives a fine understanding of the tensions that the bomber crews were up against. It’s a representation of how ordinary folk could rise to heights of selflessness while retaining their sense of humour until . . . well, until they die or perhaps just snap. Its guiding theme is understatement, well counterbalanced by the arrival of an ex-pat from America, a famous actor named Peter Kyle.

James Purefoy and Sienna Miller

The women portrayed their roles superbly. Sienna Miller was wonderfully natural as the actress and wife of Flight Lieutenant (Teddy) Graham, and Sheridan Smith was superbly robust as the Countess (Doris), wife of a Polish airman. With Emma Handy as the wife of the Flight Sergeant, visiting him for one night, and Sarah Crowden as the hotel keeper, both gloriously down-to-earth and charmless, the women managed the understatement as if they were to the manner born. The men were a bit more variable. Harry Hadden-Paton as Teddy seemed just a bit over the top, with his bonhomie appearing slightly unnatural, and although James Purefoy came over as gutlessly charming in portraying the actor Peter Kyle, his later despair at losing Teddy’s wife seemed a bit forced. The Polish airman, played by Mark Dexter, lacked a Polish accent, and appeared a bit stupid, contradicting Teddy’s continued assertions that he was “good value”. On the other hand, Joe Armstrong as the Flight Sergeant was as down-to-earth as his wife, and Clive Wood as the Squadron leader was outstanding. He exhibited a glorious tendency to effeteness, and was so natural you felt he’d just stepped in from the past.

Sheridan Smith as Doris, all photos by Johan Persson

The use of occasional music from the 1940s was just right, and the set and costume designs by Stephen Brimson Lewis gave a great feeling of authenticity. This was enhanced enormously by the film sequences of bombers taking off, with very realistic sound effects. At the end of the play things came together as if by accident, which speaks well of this production by Trevor Nunn, but the first half seemed to go rather too slowly, getting nowhere very fast.

Final dénouement with Joe Armstrong, Clive Wood, Mark Dexter and Harry Hadden-Paton

In this centenary year of Rattigan’s birth his plays are popping up all over the place, and are all well worth seeing. Performances of Flare Path continue until June 4 — for more details click here.

Less Than Kind, by Terence Rattigan, Jermyn Street Theatre, January 2011

In 1942 the Beveridge Report backed the idea of central planning for post-war reconstruction, along with a Welfare State and social safety net. “Fair shares for all” was the catchphrase, and Rattigan was sympathetic to these ideas, which inform the opinions of the young man in the play. His name is Michael Brown, a Hamlet-like character who has just rejoined his mother in London after spending five years as an evacuee in Canada. His father has died and his much-loved mother, Olivia is living with a married cabinet minister and ex-industrialist, Sir John Fletcher. Young Michael is outraged and appalled, and this young left-winger (I’m not a communist, I don’t follow the CP line) hates his mother’s partner, and presumptuously decides to bring Sir John’s wife into the affair, innocently thinking she will bust up her husband’s sinful arrangements. She doesn’t. In fact she’s a rather naughty lady who has her own affairs, and in the end she acts as the catalyst to bring everything to a happy conclusion. In the meantime, however, the wretchedly clever and priggish Michael does in fact manage to break up his mother’s relationship.

The title of the play is taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 1, sc.2) when the young prince is addressed by his step-father, and says to himself “A little more than kin, and less than kind!” The ‘step-father’ in this play, Sir John Fletcher was brilliantly portrayed by Michael Simkins. He came over as very sharp, very shrewd, and very intelligent, seeing clearly that young Michael with his “Oedipus complex and a passion for self-dramatisation” was consciously acting the part of Hamlet. It’s a clever play, with wonderful dialogue, but Rattigan was persuaded to alter it drastically in rehearsal, and although it was very successful under the title Love in Idleness, Rattigan later regretted his own changes. Fortunately a copy of the original 1944 play survived in the offices of the Lord Chamberlain, and is now staged for the first time!

This production by Adrian Brown, with fine set and costume designs by Suzi Lombardelli, gives a sense of energy to the events, and I found it riveting. The acting is wonderful, with David Osmond being assertively obnoxious as the young Michael, and Caroline Head seductively gorgeous as Sir John’s estranged wife Diana. Michael’s mother was well played by Sara Crowe, though I never felt entirely convinced about her affection for Sir John, and it struck a jarring note when she dialled only five digits on the telephone, instead of seven, and didn’t give the other party time enough to respond. Sir John’s secretary was well played by Vivienne Moore as a conscientiously mousey lady, and Katie Evans was gloriously real as Polton the maid.

This play is a must-see for any Rattigan fans, or indeed for anyone else, but this delightful theatre is small and tickets scarce. Performances continue until February 12^th — for more details click here.

After the Dance, National Theatre, NT Lyttelton, June 2010

“I love you, now change” is not a line in this play, but the young Helen lives this cliché, and at first seems to make it believable. Within a month she’s fallen in love with David Scott-Fowler and manages to get him to stop the drinking that’s destroying his liver. Her determined superficiality shatters her fiancé Peter Scott-Fowler, upends David’s 12 year marriage, and destroys his wife Joan. While these people wear the masks of gaiety and jest, and seem almost to have become their masks, reality persists beneath the surface, and the only person to fully comprehend it is John Reid, who lives with David and Joan in their spacious London flat as a self-confessed court jester, with a strong penchant for the drinks tray.

David with Helen

In the end it is John who tells David the truth about himself that kills the incipient marriage to Helen, and returns him to his former life, now as a widower. In the meantime we are treated to superb acting. Adrian Scarborough is brilliant as John, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Nancy Carroll are entirely convincing as the ever cool David and his wife Joan, who loves him but gaily pretends to be just as cool, so as not to bore him. Faye Castelow portrays Helen as a bossy little ingénue, and John Hefferman is a rather edgy Peter, who tries to take life seriously, but doesn’t quite succeed.

David playing Avalon for Joan

What I loved about this fine production by Thea Sharrock, apart from the spacious and elegant designs by Hildegard Bechtler, was the music. Certainly the play features the 1920s foxtrot ‘Avalon’ towards the end of each act, but the melody was pinched from Puccini, albeit in a disguised form, and in this production we also hear the original. For those who know it, this is powerfully suggestive because it’s the music behind E lucevan le stelle from the opera Tosca. Cavaradossi sings it before he dies, knowing that these are his last moments, and it was played here just before Joan goes out to the balcony on her own, never to return, and again at the end when David decides to return to the drinking that will destroy him.

This riveting play by Terence Rattigan had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before war was declared, and when the country’s mood rapidly changed it was taken off. So it failed to enjoy a good run, and Rattigan left it out of the collected plays he published in 1953. It’s been somewhat ignored for that reason, but this production and cast do it full justice, and I recommend booking tickets before word gets out.

Performances continue until August 11^th — for details click here.

The Browning Version, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, September 2009

This production by Peter Hall of Terence Rattigan’s play about a classics master at boarding school, was beautifully performed. Peter Bowles was utterly convincing as the dried-out classics master, Crocker-Harris, who has recently suffered a heart attack and is now resigning from the school to take up a less stressful position at a crammer. Charles Edwards was superb as the engagingly human science master, Frank Hunter, and his rather cold affair with Crocker-Harris’s wife, played by Candida Gubbins, was well-portrayed. James Laurenson was good as the non-entity of a headmaster, and James Musgrave was wonderful as Taplow, the pupil who is keen to get his promotion to the ‘remove’, and presents Crocker-Harris with the Browning version of Agamemnon by Aeschylus. The playful mockery of the boys is as nothing compared to the calculated cruelty of Crocker-Harris’s wife, who relates to her husband details of her affairs with the other masters, nor to the cold denial by the trustees of a pension to poor Crocker-Harris, who has served only eighteen years instead of the necessary twenty. Terence Rattigan, and of course Peter Bowles, engage our sympathy for this disappointed scholar who was once a star at Oxford and is now teaching his pupils to read Aeschylus, surely the hardest of the Greek playwrights to understand. What is it that turns bright young people into unloved experts who inspire little more than fear from 99% of their underlings. Whatever it is, Rattigan portrays the result with understanding and regret. An excellent play.

The Winslow Boy, Rose Theatre, Kingston-on-Thames, May 2009

This new production, which is about to go on tour, gave us a terrific performance of Terence Rattigan’s enthralling play about a teenage boy wrongly accused of stealing a five shilling postal order at Naval College. The case, based on a true story, goes all the way to Parliament. This fine production directed by Stephen Unwin, with costumes by Mark Bouman, and sets by Simon Higlett showing the drawing room in the Winslow’s house, worked very well. The acting was entirely natural and this theatrical play came over with complete conviction. What a very pleasant change from the dreadfully untheatrical play Madame de Sade, which I saw earlier the same week.

The cast all did an excellent job, particularly Claire Cox as the Winslow boy’s big sister Catherine, showing great intelligence and emotional restraint. Timothy West gave a commanding performance as his father, with Diane Fletcher as a sympathetic mother who laments the financial and emotional strain created by her husband’s consuming passion for justice. Adrian Lukis added a terrifyingly professional quality as Sir Robert Morton the famous barrister who is surprisingly willing to take on this seemingly trivial case, and prove the boy’s innocence. As the boy Ronnie, Hugh Wyld acquitted himself well, as did Thomas Howes as his elder, happy-go-lucky brother. Sarah Flind was good as the maid, and John Sackville and Roger May were convincing as the young men who would woo Catherine — the first rejecting her when she refuses to drop her brother’s case, and the second willing to wed even though she can feel no love for him.

This is a well-crafted play that starts slowly, building up to the entrance of the famous barrister Sir Robert who undertakes a ferociously provocative interrogation of young Ronnie. After it’s over his remark, “The boy is plainly innocent. I accept the brief”, is a real coup de theatre, followed immediately by the fall of the curtain on the first half. The audience responded well to the performance, and choice lines such as, “the House of Commons is a peculiarly exhausting place, with too little ventilation and far too much hot air” caused well deserved laughter, particularly in view of recent events in parliament. Altogether a wonderful evening’s entertainment.

After playing at the Rose in Kingston the play tours: Cambridge Arts Theatre 1st – 6th June, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford 8th – 13th June, Theatre Royal Bath 15th – 20th June, Oxford Playhouse 22nd – 27th June, Malvern Theatres 29th June – 4th July, Milton Keynes Theatre 6th – 11th July, Churchill Theatre Bromley 13th – 18th July, Brighton Theatre Royal 20th – 25th July.