The Deep Blue Sea - Review

Theatre Royal, Haymarket

*****

Written by Terence Rattigan

Directed by Lindsay Posner

Tamsin Greig

Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea is a minutely observed take on one day in the life of Hester Collyer. Middle aged and having suffered a failed marriage and a failing affair, we encounter Hester, prone on the floor of her tawdry Ladbroke Grove flat following yet another failure, this time in her attempt to kill herself. Lindsay Posner’s take on 1950s England delivers a sepia-tinged snapshot of social mores that have long since been discarded. But while life’s customs may have evolved and changed, the play’s underlying themes of passion and despair are timeless.

As the day unfolds we meet Hester’s landlady, neighbours, her husband and her lover, as the jigsaw pieces of her life are slowly revealed. Rattigan has a powerful and perceptive understanding of the human condition, with each of his characters carefully crafted as they impact onto the fraught and fragile Hester.

But more than just the sublime writing, the acting at the Theatre Royal Haymarket defines this production (a transfer in from the Theatre Royal Bath) as one of the finest dramas currently to be found on a London stage. Tamsin Greig is Hester, on stage throughout, in a performance that captures the complexities of her depression, self-loathing and desperate desire in the finest of detail. Never melodramatic, Greig delivers a masterclass in perfectly nuanced acting.

As her High Court judge husband Sir William and some years her senior, Nicholas Farrell turns in an equally assured performance of a complex love that still burns for his estranged wife, while Hadley Fraser’s Freddie, Hester’s younger lover, offers up a snapshot of a man battling his own demons.

The key supporting roles of Miller, a lapsed German doctor and Mrs Elton, the landlady of the house are perfectly and sensitively fleshed out by Finbar Lynch and Selina Cadell respectively, each contributing valuable colour to Rattigan’s harrowing palette. Peter McKintosh’s set is an understated masterpiece of 50’s austerity, perfectly lit by Paul Pyant.

Rattigan’s eye for English misery is unmatched, and under Posner’s direction and with Greig’s breathtaking performance, The Deep Blue Sea is unmissable theatre.

Runs until 21 June

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan