Theatre Royal Bath until 2 November
If Terence Rattigan was still alive today (unlikely, I know, as he’d have needed to have lived to be 113 years old), he’d deserve to be sitting in the bar of The Savoy raising a cocktail and, no doubt, an eyebrow to Father Time with a knowing look and a wry whisper of “I told you so”.
At the peak of his career, Rattigan was one of the UK’s most popular dramatists and one of the most highly paid screenwriters in the world. But the times they were a-changin’ in post-war Britain and a new generation of playwrights, theatre directors and critics (the ‘angry young men’ who were occasionally ‘liberal’ enough to allow the odd woman to join their angry ranks) believed that “cosy, well-made plays” had had their day and the theatre-going public deserved to see their own real life reflected on stage rather than a depiction of the kind of smart, smug, upper-crust suburbia that theatre at the time generally focused on. Rattigan’s popularity was sunk by the kitchen sink; at the time of his death in 1977, he was barely remembered by the theatre-going public. But if revenge is a dish best served cold, Rattigan must be enjoying a heavenly selection of chilled canapes with his cocktail-in-the-clouds.
A series of stunning recent revivals of his work including director Lindsay Posner’s outstanding production of The Deep Blue Sea at the Theatre Royal Bath’s Ustinov studio in May (which opens in London next year) have reintroduced Rattigan to a whole new generation who, perhaps, “get” Rattigan’s real (and really complex) depth, meaning and purpose in the way that he himself intended them to be “got”.
For the Summer 1954 double-bill (a Theatre Royal Bath/Living Theatre Productions collaboration), director James Dacre has artfully paired Table Number Seven (from Rattigan’s 1954 Separate Tables duo) with The Browning Version (1948) for the very first time, resulting in a perfect partnership that puts Rattigan’s unique understanding of What It Is To Be Human in the spotlight against Mike Britton’s elegantly spare revolving set that gives the audience an intimate, fly-on-the-wall perspective of both dramas.
The original script for Table Number Seven was only discovered after Rattigan’s death and never performed during his lifetime; in the late 1940s/early 1950s, references to homosexuality weren’t allowed on stage, let alone discussed in polite society. This elegant revival uses the original script, giving today’s audiences both a time capsule to reflect on and an opportunity to consider our own prejudices.
Major Pollock (a remarkably sensitive, compelling performance from Nathaniel Parker) is a long-term resident at the Beauregard Hotel: a Bournemouth boarding house for the genteel classes. Pollock is also, as it turns out, homosexual (and, as it turns out, not the ‘Major’ that he claims to be, either). When he’s outed by a local newspaper report on his arrest for importuning men on the nearby seafront, Pollock’s fellow hotel residents including the interfering, judgmental Mrs Railton-Bell (a deliciously direct, uncompromisingly self-righteous, captivatingly charismatic performance from Siân Phillips) and an assortment of characters ranging from her subjugated, timorous daughter Sybil (Alexandra Dowling) to young moral crusader Charles (Jeremy Neaumark Jones), all of whom are subjected to Mrs Railton-Bell’s demand that Major Pollock leaves the hotel immediately; the other guests, however – whether blatantly or more subtly – beg to differ.
It’s worth bearing in mind here that, in the original performances of Table Number Seven, Major Pollock was accused of sexually harassing women in a cinema, which was deemed to be far more socially acceptable than dilly-dallying with other men. Oh, how times have changed! But have they?
After the break, the slow-burn drama of The Browning Version initially feels less emotionally impactful than Table Number Seven, the tension creeping in subtly as we learn that it’s Classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris’s last day of teaching at an English boys’ school where he never particularly made his mark, and was never particularly liked by either fellow staff members or pupils. His spiteful wife Millie doesn’t like him much either, which is why she’s having an affair with one of his colleagues.
When fifth form pupil John Taplow gives his teacher a leaving gift in the form of a copy of Robert Browning’s translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon it opens an emotional floodgate for Crocker-Harris, who starts to question the hows and whys of his career, his toxic relationship, his past and his future. As his horrid wife, Lolita Chakrabarti ditches the smart, experienced sensitivity she bought to her role as Beauregard Hotel manager Miss Cooper in favour of a venomous, bitter harridan, while Nathaniel Parker brings yet more of the affecting, authentic potency of emotion that led us to invest so much faith in Table Number Seven’s Major Pollockto his second role of the evening, this time as the teacher with many personal lessons to learn.
Do we still have much to learn from Terrence Rattigan? It would very much seem so. Summer 1954 confirms his rightful status as one of the finest British playwrights of the 20th century, ahead of his time rather than simply pandering to popular taste.