We associate Terence Rattigan with domestic drama. He also, however, had leanings towards the epic. In 1949 he wrote a play about Alexander the Great, Adventure Story, and in 1960 this not dissimilar study of the tormented spirit of TE Lawrence. But, although it shows Rattigan’s habitual craftsmanship and is handsomely revived by Adrian Noble, it offers a limited view of Lawrence by placing so much emphasis on his sexual, rather than political, guilt.
Rattigan’s thesis, repeated several times, is that Lawrence’s phenomenal self-belief was all but destroyed after he was sodomised by his Turkish captors at Daraa in 1917. Everything leads up to and away from that incident. In the rather good early scenes we see Lawrence seeking anonymity as Aircraftman Ross at Uxbridge in 1922. The play then flashes back to the story of how in 1916 Lawrence transformed himself from a Cairo mapmaker into a leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire. All this is patiently done but everything hinges on the conviction of the Turkish military governor at Daraa that the violation of Lawrence’s body is the key to his destruction. After that, Lawrence is a man in flight from himself.
It is perfectly possible that Rattigan, whose own sexuality was masked by the rigorous laws of the post war world, identified in some way with Lawrence but he pins too much on a single event: recent scholarship has even suggested that Lawrence invented the incident at Daraa since he was seen a week later at Aqaba in the best of health. It strikes me as far more likely that Lawrence’s troubled spirit was driven by his knowledge of the intended betrayal of the Arab cause through the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement which carved up the Middle East on Franco-British terms. That was the argument of Howard Brenton’s recent play, Lawrence After Arabia. But, although Rattigan has Lawrence falling into silence when a Bedouin follower suggests he has lied, he generally avoids the larger geopolitical framework.
Rattigan does at least create a dominant lead role, which Joseph Fiennes plays with some skill. Like Peter O’Toole, he is a touch too good-looking to be an ideal Lawrence but he captures well his physical awkwardness and gift for insubordination: the liveliest scenes are those where he abruptly confronts a flight lieutenant at Uxbridge or General Allenby (very well played by Paul Freeman) in Arabia. Fiennes also conveys Lawrence’s ability to create a genuine affection among his fellow aircraftmen.
It is an accomplished performance in an elegantly mounted production. William Dudley’s design is based on the presence of seven massive pillars, possibly indicating Arab wisdom, Paul Pyant’s lighting evokes the heat and aridity of the desert and faded, sepia-tinted newsreel is used to remind us of Lawrence’s public fame. In a large cast, there is also conspicuous support from John Hopkins as Ross’s ultimate betrayer, Michael Feast as the sadistic Turkish governor, and Peter Polycarpou as a bombastic sheik. Yet, in the end, the play leaves one vaguely unsatisfied. Where Rattigan was capable in The Deep Blue Sea of turning a domestic drama into a metaphor of the nation, in Ross he takes major public events and reduces them to the status of a private trauma.
-
At Chichester Festival theatre until 25 June. Box office: 01243 781312.
