Terence Rattigan has become an issue as much as a playwright. Because he was critically crucified in the 60s, the tendency now is to sanctify him. But Man and Boy, virtually unseen since its brief West End run in 1963, turns out to be far better than its initial detractors claimed, though well short of vintage Rattigan.
The subject, for Rattigan, was real and painful enough: a father's inability to return his son's love. In this case the father is a world-famous Romanian financier, Gregor Antonescu, who hides out in his estranged son's Greenwich Village basement apartment in 1934. With his empire about to crash in ruins, Antonescu lures the chairman of American Electric to this downtown dump hoping to secure a crucial merger. And, without consulting his son, he ruthlessly uses him as a sexual decoy to tempt the covertly gay chairman and thereby save his own skin.
The play was partly inspired by the disgraced Swedish match tycoon Ivar Kreuger, who also turned out to have a bastard son. But it owes even more to Rattigan's own complex relationship with his diplomat-father, who exploited his son's fame without returning his affection; and, at its best it feels like the exploration of an open wound. Its prime weakness is that the far-fetched plot fails to match the authenticity of the emotion.
But although Rattigan never analyses Antonescu, the role gives David Suchet a chance to display his hypnotic technical finesse. He shows the tycoon's ability to switch in a second from fake cordiality to reptilian menace. He also has the Olivier-like ability to invest the simple personal pronoun "you" with an accusatory ferocity. And, as he finally embraces his son without fully touching him, Suchet reveals the depths of the hero's isolation. It is a formidable performance by a remarkable actor that provides much of the psychological information Rattigan neglects to convey.
Maria Aitken, as director, has shrewdly edited the original text and gets particularly good performances from David Yelland as the hero's smoothly self-serving accomplice, Ben Silverstone as his emotionally damaged son and Helen Grace as his glamorously glacial wife. Simon Higlett's set also conveys the cramped shabbiness of the Village apartment.
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