The Deep Blue Sea (National Theatre, 2016)

"When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting."

I haven't managed to keep up with these wonderful lockdown gifts from the National Theatre, what with life being so very hectic these days, but they really are so kind to us, and really do need all the support they can get right now. Culture matters.

I’ve never seen this play before and nor, I’m afraid to say, have I seen any Terence Rattigan before. It may be terribly upper middle class, but this play is wonderful in how it deals with such deep, overwhelming emotion through the medium of deliberately awkward, very British dialogue. Perhaps our distance from the play helps us to see it more clearly; certainly 1952 is made to seem a long time ago. Restrictive divorce laws; suicide being a crime for which one can be imprisoned; the same for homosexuality, particularly resonant for the author and (it’s implied) for poor Dr Miller, who may perhaps be seen as the authorial voice. We are fortunate to live in the wake of the 1960s when these wrongs where righted.

Helen McRory is simply outrageously good here in the meatiest of female roles. As much of a revelation to me, though, is the play itself. The style may be old-fashioned, and the treatment of the themes may jar with our mores of today, although it’s fascinating to see how subtly subversive the play is. Rattigan is a writer I shall have to explore.