There’s an uncanny symmetry between the plays showing currently at Bath’s Theatre Royal and its studio theatre, the Ustinov.
Nicholas Farrell as Sir William Collyer and Tamsin Greig as Hester Collyer | Photo © Manuel Harlan
Both plays – The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan – are semi-autobiographical family dramas written by gay playwrights at a time when homosexuality was illegal in their countries.
Consequently, the illusions to main characters’ sexuality / gender had to be subverted and repressed to be staged in mainstream theatres, and the resulting themes of suppressed and unfulfilled romantic yearning add greatly to the power of both plays.
In The Deep Blue Sea, Rattigan states he based it on his covert relationship with another man which could not be sustained, and the original intention was to have the central relationship between two men, but this was changed to satisfy public tastes.
In doing so, he created one of the most striking lead female characters in British drama.
Hester Collyer has left her staid but comfortable marriage for a highly-charged affair with a younger ex-RAF officer, Freddie Page, who offers her excitement and physical attraction but not financial stability, responsibility or, ultimately, a similar level of commitment.
When Freddie forgets her birthday, it is the final straw in this one-sided relationship, and she attempts suicide as the play begins.
The current production at the Ustinov Studio serves the play beautifully, and it would be hard to envisage a better staged and cast production.
Celebrated director Lindsay Posner gives us a smartly-paced staging which encourages the much-needed moments of humour but highlights sequences of genuine raw power.
Peter McKintosh’s set is a strikingly drab, almost monochrome presentation of faded neglect – all peeling wallpaper, scratched furniture, cracked leather armchair – which reflects Hester’s low self image as well as the impecunious lifestyle she is now living. You can almost smell the damp.
The performances from the entire cast are beautifully restrained and hold the audience spellbound throughout. Tamsin Greig’s Hester is a tightly-wound creature oscillating endlessly between expressing her desires and hiding behind walls of self-preservation.
Most of the time she holds herself in check, which makes her rare lapses all the more strikingly powerful (telling the story of how she met Freddie; her forced laughter swiftly giving way to tears; her howl of abandonment at the end of Act One).
As Freddie, Oliver Chris avoids the route of simplistic chauvinistic bluster by slowly revealing a vulnerable, confused man hiding his own self-doubt behind a stream of alcohol; his regret at not being able to return Hester’s feelings is palpable.
As the abandoned husband Sir William, Nicholas Farrell also strips back the stuffy exterior to reveal the love he has been unable to lose for his wife, and the brief glimpses of physical contact between them are tinged with regret.
Meanwhile, Finbar Lynch as the ex-doctor neighbour Miller is a model of dry delivery and self-containment, with flashes of flourishes that hint towards the unstated reason he was struck off and imprisoned. Such subtexts would have been suppressed in Rattigan’s time, but are now finally visible for modern audiences.
Tickets for the rest of the run are sold out, but if you have managed to secure one, you are in for a memorable evening of love, loss and yearning, with visceral moments which will stay with you for a long time.
The Deep Blue Sea is showing at Ustinov Studio, Bath until 1st June. Box office: 01225 448844.
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Reviewer: Steve Huggins
