Deep Blue Sea⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When you go into the West End to see a play you expect to experience
three things, a wonderful historic venue that has been staging drama for
decades, a finely crafted script that stands the test of time in engaging audiences
and a cast of actors at the very top of their art. You will be hard pressed to
find a better example of these three elements fusing together than the brilliant
production of Terrance Rattigan’s 1952 play
The Deep Blue Sea with a
stella cast at the glorious Haymarket Theatre. Transferring from the small
intimate Ustinov Theatre in Bath with largely the same cast this production sits
beautifully on the larger West End stage and enthrals its audience.
Rattigan’s plays were of an era from French without Tears
in 1936 to In praise of love in 1973 with golden period in post-world War
II Britain that established him as one of the great 20th Century British playwrights.
They often centred on failed relationships and sexual frustration, and it is
suggested that his own gay lifestyle was coded into his writing. Indeed, it has
been speculated that Deep Blue sea was originally about male lovers before
reaching the stage as Hester, a lost soul between her husband Sir William
Collyer and her current partner, Freddie. Its dramatic opening with a lifeless
body lying in front of a gas fire in a darkened room while neighbours bang on
the door because they can smell gas is a brilliant opening that draws you straight
into her troubled life. The tattered
peeling paper of the walls reinforce the sense of a woman in decline.
Tasmin Greig is stupendous as Hester beautifully showing her
passion , anger and despair as she tries to sort through her colliding feelings
about the men in her life. She carries the air of loneliness and of unrequited
or lost love that draws us to become sympathetic to her plight and hopeful that
those around her can give her hope to carry on and not attempt suicide again. Selina
Cadell is a delight as the landlady Mrs Elton, caring for her tenants but
revelling in the gossip and intrigue. It is lovely subtle comic performance with
her pauses and glances being as powerful as her words.
The male cast is equally strong. Nicholas Ferrell is her impressive caring husband
a respected judge who she has left a year before but who still cares enough to
have her back while Hadley Fraser is the RAF pilot who had lost his nerve and
uses alcohol as an escape and whose passionate affair with Hester has quickly
cooled. Finbar Lynch creates the curious laid-back struck off Doctor, who lives
in the same block and tends to her in her initial recovery. Each character is very
well drawn , believable and we can understand their relationship with her. There
remains a sexual tension that bubbles away under the surface adding to the
taught drama played out over one day in three acts.
Once again, the Director Lindsay Posner, makes no attempt to
update the setting to a later period and leaves the audience to draw their own conclusion
to take back into the real world. There are feelings of loneliness and despair
over failed relationships, of uncertainty and shame over the future and the
shows of raw emotions later in the play are powerful and intense. But despite the
challenges and disappointments, life must go on and I suppose there is great value
in finding like souls to connect with who will help guide you through the issues.
And perhaps we should all look out for our neighbours who might need our help.
Nick Wayne
Five stars
Oedipus at The Wyndhams ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The legend of Oedipus captured in Sophocles ancient tragedy written around 429BC is a well-known basic tale made more famous by Sigmund Freud’s coining of the Oedipus Complex in 1910 to refer to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father. This tale is the basis of Robert Icke’s latest exciting new production at the Wyndhams Theatre. It does mean that many of the audience already know the basic underlying truth of the situation that is laid out before us as the countdown clock ticks down until the final revelation, so the shock and surprise of the revelation is very muted. It does require that the script, direction and acting has to be first class to sustain our interest for the two-hour non-stop running time. Thankfully Icke and his fine cast know how to do this and deliver a thoroughly engrossing and satisfying dramatic story.
Icke reimagines the story in a modern setting where Oedipus is awaiting the result of an election campaign supported by his wife, Jocasta, her brother Creon, the loyal family servant Corin and their three children Antigone, Eteocles and Polyneices. To complicate matters further his mother Merope arrives unannounced leaving her dying husband’s bedside to tell Oedipus a pivotal secret. The Icke vision draws an easy parallel with many modern electioneering campaign pledges as Oedipus promises to both reopen the investigation into the death, 34 years earlier, of the previous leader Laius (Jocasta’s first husband) and to disclose his own birth certificate although this promise does telegraph to the audience the complex revelations of the story.
It works as a play because of the outstanding performances of the three central characters and their powerful and emotional interactions which are elevated by our knowledge of the real back story which is unknown to the other on-stage characters. Mark Strong is magnificent as Oedipus, the confident politician enjoying the success of his campaigning until his wife and mother gradually reveal the hidden truths to him, causing a despairing desperate collapse as the reality dawns on him. Lesley Manville is wonderful as the powerful loving wife supporting him in his ambition and unaware of the truth of his birth. The third protagonist is June Watson as his mother Merope, anxiously trying to find time with her son to finally reveal to him that truth of his birth.
The story telling has many tremendously effective set piece scenes which first establish and then deconstruct the family relationships as these truths are slowly revealed. The initial video shows Oedipus setting out his pledges with Creon (Michael Gould) nervously circulating in the background. The blind Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) sets out his three premonitions adding the first signs of dramatic tension. The family dinner to celebrate the end of the campaign cleverly reveals the parental love of his children and then spills into an erotic celebration with his wife. The tension rises more when we meet the driver of the car in which Laius was killed and then again when Jocasta reveals how she was pregnant by Laius at the shocking age of 13. Then finally when Merope reveals that Oedipus was adopted by her and the dreadful truth dawns of Oedipus and Jocasta. Even though we know these truths from the start, the writing and playing of these scenes makes them gripping and dramatic and you are left admiring the performances and swept along by the drama.
Icke is a master storyteller taking familiar tales and bringing them to the stage with a powerful creativity that is a joy to experience. The recent tour of Animal Farm, the wonderful Mary Stuart, the extraordinary Oresteia, and the utterly scary 1984 are now joined by this version of Oedipus as wonderful demonstrations of his mastery of adaptation and direction. As around the globe political change is happening the allusions to recent leaders of the free world resonate with hints to the modern controversies over Obama’s birth certificate, Trump’s cover up of Stormy Daniel affair or Johnson’s multiple children making this ancient tale relevant and topical in his fresh setting. A triumph of adaptation.
Nick Wayne
Four stars
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