The Deep Blue Sea
National Theatre, June 2, 2016
Hester is found by her neighbours after a failed suicide attempt. We think she’s Hester Page, married to the handsome former test pilot but in the panic after her neighbours find her, the truth starts to emerge.
She’s left her husband the respectable Judge and has been living in sin with Freddie. She thinks it’s love. So does he for a while… but together they are toxic.
She’s gone from being the respectable lawyer’s wife, entertaining London society; to a woman in a dressing gown, drinking cheap claret out of mugs, desperate and begging her lover to return to her for one last time.
He’s gone from being the handsome RAF hero who won’t touch alcohol in case it affects his golf game; to a drunk who happily swigs a bottle of whiskey as an afternoon aperitif getting ready for whatever new club has opened in Ladbroke Grove.
I love how Rattigan paints a veneer of respectablity over this post WW2 world but still allows us to see how shaken and fragile it really is. All of the minor characters help paint this tableau — from Hester’s ex husband who will happily take her back to save her; to the disgraced doctor who’s now working at a bookies… Each character is exquisitely drawn.
I love how the language is so delicious and so very English. Last time I saw Rattigan was After the Dance at the NT with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the cad. I LOVED it. I love the controlled pace of these plays and how delicately balanced situations unfurl slowly and almost cruelly with few happy endings.
Chapeau to Helen McCrory who is fragile yet steely, feline yet reserved. She is magnificent in the role of Hester. MAGNIFICENT. I also loved Marion Bailey as the caring yet loose-lipped landlady and Tom Burke as the conflicted and troubled cad Freddie. He even made me feel sorry for him at the end…
I also thought the set excellent — very clever use of the space and lighting to share the life in the other flats.
5/5 Superbly sensual and sad.
