The whirligig of time brings in its revenges. As the most celebrated victim of the 1956 theatrical revolution, Terence Rattigan has slowly reasserted his claim to our attention; and his cause is certainly helped by Oxford Stage Company's vibrant revival of this "lost" play, which virtually disappeared after a run of 60 performances in 1939.
Written shortly before the outbreak of the second world war, Rattigan's play is partly an attack on the feckless hedonism that followed the earlier global conflict. His characters, drinking their lives away in the Mayfair of 1938, are the not-so-bright, not-so-young things sleepwalking into another catastrophe. His hero, David Scott-Fowler, is a popular historian more concerned with writing bad books about King Bomba of Naples than addressing the present crisis. And the plot revolves around a salvage-attempt by the earnest Helen who, in order to rescue David from physical and creative death, coolly shatters his 12-year-long marriage. What she doesn't bargain for is either David's moral inertia or his wife's unspoken love.
As an indictment of the drinking classes, the play prefigures Rodney Ackland's Absolute Hell, which Rattigan himself financially backed. It also shows Rattigan's abiding fascination with A Tale of Two Cities, which he had earlier co-adapted with John Gielgud. But the real strength of the play, as always with Rattigan, lies in his profound understanding of the human heart. David's wife, Joan, greets the news of his defection with stoic, unruffled calm; only gradually do we realise the power of a passion she was afraid to declare. Often thought of as the exemplar of English emotional restraint, Rattigan was actually its fiercest critic.
This emerges very clearly in Dominic Dromgoole's production, where Michael Siberry's tight-lipped David and Catherine Russell's gaily hostessy Joan keep up their emotional guard, only revealing their shared love when it is far too late. Anna Hope's Helen also exudes the iron determination of the destructive idealist, and there is terrific support from Joanna Scanlan as a veteran socialite. Having previously seen the play staged by excellent Oxford drama students, I am now utterly convinced that this is one of Rattigan's finest studies of the English vice of emotional repression.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 01722 320333. Then tours to Bury St Edmunds, Oxford and Northampton.
