Terence Rattigan’s 1936 hit has survived the years, as well as its author’s fluctuating reputation and the horror of being turned into one of the worst ever musicals. It emerges, in Paul Miller’s lively revival, as a sprightly farce that reveals more than even Rattigan may have intended about the wobbly nature of British masculinity.
The setting is a crammer for language learners on the west coast of France, and the action revolves around the panic induced by an amorous huntress, aptly named Diana. On the surface, the play looks vaguely misogynist. In reality, Rattigan pins down precisely the nervousness of the 1930s public-school male in the presence of women.
Diana’s visible allure leads a budding diplomat, a naval commander and a would-be writer into an intense homosocial bonding. A shyly demure female teacher is simply treated as one of the chaps. The only man who seems remotely at ease with women is a bullish hearty who treats sex as a commodity to be bought. Underneath the laughter lies an all too accurate portrait of the emotional and physical diffidence that Rattigan was to explore more fully in The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables.
Miller’s production is extremely well cast. Genevieve Gaunt, in an impressive stage debut, plays Diana not as a calculating vamp but as a woman apprehensive about expressing her true feelings. Sarah Winter captures exactly the repressed ardour of the other female resident, and Alex Bhat, Joe Eyre and William Belchambers offer perfectly contrasted examples of masculine terror.
As the Rattigan bandwagon gathers momentum, it is good to be reminded that even this early, inconsequential-seeming piece tells us a lot about the fear of sexual passion that was to be one of his abiding themes.
• At the Orange Tree, Richmond, until 21 November. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
• This article was amended on 26 October 2015 to correct the spelling of Sarah Winter’s name, from Sarah Winters as an earlier version said.
