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The Rattigan The Newsletter of The Terence Rattigan Society October 2019 Issue No. 30 Version Back over June and July I was ‘laid up’ unable us Phil Archer was played by a very remarkable to pursue my usual day job of photographing man. (And that radio’s oldest soap needs ‘Bruno steam engines, electric bollards, old buses, Milna’ today as never before.) As a bonus there marquee components, market stalls, fun fairs and is a wonderful portrait of Dylan Thomas. the odd fashion catwalk before writing on same. This sent me to Humphrey Carpenter’s Sensibly I took the opportunity to do a bit of centenary history of the O.U.D.S. where I found reading and included two of my favourites; this anecdote about John Gielgud’s 1932 Michael Darlow’s Rattigan biography and production of Romeo and Juliet. Norman Painting’s Reluctant Archer. “The only failure in this remarkable I recommend both. production seems to have been Terence Both also came to mind during the excellent Rattigan. He had just one line, 'Faith, we may Alan Brodie and Dan Rebellato talk at the put up our pipes and be gone', and proved quite Minerva Theatre, Chichester during the run of incapable of saying it to anyone's satisfaction, The Deep Blue Sea reported elsewhere in this least of all Gielgud's, who remembers giving issue. 'endless demonstrations of disapproval'. On One questioner asked when the revival of the first night Rattigan spoke it at the solemn interest in Rattigan started. A question to which, moment after Juliet's death had been I suppose, many of us have our own answer. announced—and to his horror raised a laugh My own interest, for example, didn’t need from the audience. He tried it with a different reviving. But anybody wanting an answer as emphasis the next night, but the audience still good as any should read the introduction to laughed. Word got around that he was having Michael’s book. I suspect his honest recollection trouble, so that by the end of the week he could would stand for many. only avoid causing mirth by delivering the line Going back to that period it seems impossible, so quietly that it was entirely inaudible.” in retrospect, to understand the influence that Finally without going into boring detail about Kenneth Tynan was allowed to have on British my recent period ‘in dock’ I ought to credit theatre. Norman Painting with some part in my continued But maybe a clue comes in Norman Painting’s existence. Just after completing Reluctant super autobiography. Painting was up at Oxford, Archer he suffered a heart attack, the lead up to researching for a PhD, during Tynan’s time. At which he recounts in a short addendum. the same time he was acting and directing One sentence has stayed with me since first alongside, amongst others, Shirley Catlin reading in 1982. It is: “I inflict this cautionary (Williams to be) Robert Hardy and Robert tale on my patient reader to show how dangerous Robinson. ‘showing a stiff upper lip’ can sometimes be. If He gives us a picture of Tynan as a man who your body tells you it is utterly exhausted came from the same area, the Midlands, believe it.” determined to dominate Oxford and, reading It was with those words in mind I contacted between the lines, to be taken at all times at his the surgery and, fully recovered, I commend it own valuation. It’s only a few pages of a wide as a sentiment to act on unreservedly. ranging excellently written tome which shows Roger Mills 1 A slow evolution Dan Rebellato and Alan Brodie discussed the genesis of The Deep Blue Sea There will be bigger houses at Chichester’s Ah yes Hester. What about the myth that it Minerva Theatre but few will have had better started out with a homosexual couple? Despite value for money than the forty or so of us folk, including Brian Forbes, who say they saw gathered in July - on the last day of the run as it the first draft which concerned a male happens - to hear Dan Rebellato talk on the relationship, Dan doesn't believe a word of it. genesis and development of The Deep Blue Sea. For a start there were too many limitations and Standing at a lectern that looked just a tad out it wouldn’t have been put on anywhere. Rattigan of place in Hester and Freddie's cheap furnished was too much of a commercial person to think a rooms he grabbed his audience from the first few performances in a theatre club was sentence describing Rattigan’s ashen faced worthwhile. Hester, Dan was clear, is not a man response to the news of Kenneth Morgan’s in drag, she is a woman in the mid twentieth suicide, delivered to the Adelphi Hotel Liverpool century. where Adventure Story was previewing. Terry All the drafts, bar the first, are in the British was silent, unsurprisingly given the prospect of Library and, from these, it’s obvious the basic scandal breaking over his head. Morgan an ex plot was fixed from the very earliest stages. The lover had taken his own life. Homosexuality and journey of the suicide note and the proffered suicide were both acts illegal at the time. When shilling are all there but everything else changes after a long period he spoke he simply said: “The enormously. The ideas become more explicit in play will open with the dead body in front of the each successive draft through a process of paring gas fire.” down and refinement taking away excess Yet from that initial idea there followed three material and improving the dramatic effect. year’s gestation. Why so long? Some significant changes take place in Dan pointed out, what might be called, Miller’s character - a number of his pompous Rattigan’s career context. At the time Rattigan lines are removed and given to Welch. But it is was seen still as a writer of light comedies. Yes Rattigan’s sense of the dramatic which makes it there had been Flare Path, The Winslow Boy Miller who stages the dramatic intervention at and The Browning Version but the first was the end. Throughout he compresses and refines viewed as melodrama, Winlsow as a sort of but in doing so what emerges is a powerful image Edwardian pastiche and The Browning Version of Britain and the ordinary British at the time. It was presented with Harlequinade really a very is a masterpiece. lightweight piece of work. But, as Dan pointed out in discussion with Yes, he felt the need to reassure audiences, Alan Brodie, it was masterpiece that fell out of and maybe even himself, that he was serious favour from its first production until the 1993 playwright. But he was also aware of the risks. revival at the Almeida. After the Dance with its sombre notions and So how was Rattigan affected by his fall from poor reception had sent him away from serious favour after Look Back in Anger? things as well as bringing on a spell of writer’s Dan reckoned Rattigan thrived when he was block. So The Deep Blue Sea was really his first liked and was upset when he sensed he’d fallen attempt to write a profoundly serious play about out of favour. He commented: “Variation on a ordinary people. Theme got poor, sometimes snide, reviews. But But there were other irons in the fire and it Rattigan continued to write the plays he wanted was only with Adventure Story and Who is to write and he did keep up with developments Sylvia? safely in performance that Rattigan set in the theatre. But even Ross, as late as 1960, off to the Stag Inn at Binfield to work on Hester met resistance.” Collyer. “He did go into a decline and set off to 2 Hollywood to be the best paid script writer in the was quite ahead of his time when you look at world writing a number of forgettable films. He some of the very cardboard token women offered had a slight revival in the seventies, but I think by some of his contemporaries.” when he died, in 1977, he felt a bit a bit of an Alan Brodie mentioned that he often had anachronism.” requests to do The Deep Blue Sea with man in Asked when there was revival of interest in the lead. But he felt strongly that this would Rattigan Dan thought it started when people change the play. Dan Rebellato reported that realised that the plays weren’t period pieces - Nancy Carroll (Hester in the CFT production) they didn’t need to be set when they were written was clear the part was written for a woman and to work. to play it with a man in the lead would alter it “The 1993 Almeida revival looked at a new fundamentally. way to present the play. It does not need to be Asked if Rattigan would continue to be seen period, it can be simple, and it can be as relevant beyond 2019 Dan offered no firm atmospheric. The plays have to have new opinion beyond the plain fact that all playwrights approaches. They are not just about french go in and out of fashion and it was impossible to windows and gentility.” predict. He was equally non-committal on what “In plays like The Deep Blue Sea the human Rattigan might be writing about if he was alive drama is real and not located in any place or time.

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