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Tamsin Greig is shatteringly good in Terence Rattigan’s 1952 tragedy of quiet desperation. She plays Hester Collyer, a clergyman’s daughter who left her eminent lawyer husband for a raffish ex-RAF pilot who has turned to drink and delusion in peacetime. Hester is first seen unconscious after trying to gas herself in their rented rooms in shabby, post-war Ladbroke Grove, failing only because she forgot – or couldn’t afford – to put a shilling in the meter.
Though Hester’s story is the epicentre of sadness, Lindsay Posner’s finely-wrought revival also shows us the wreckage of the husband, Bill (Nicholas Farrell) and the neglectful lover, Freddie (Hadley Fraser). It evokes the humanity of her landlady and fellow-tenants, particularly Finbar Lynch as the doctor, Karl Miller - struck off for some unforgiveable act of misconduct - who tells Hester that life is possible even after hope.
Of course the play is dated. I can almost hear younger readers’ brains melting at the thought of coin meters and genteel penury in W11, let alone Freddie’s what-ho-chaps slang, which even Hester says is as outmoded as “gadzooks”. Rattigan was supposed to have been swept away with Noel Coward by John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger in 1956, wasn’t he?
Actually, The Deep Blue Sea feels fresher now than that kitchen sink drama, and in some ways anticipated its portrait of an impossible coupling in straitened circumstances. As a claustrophobic heritage project with an A-list cast, Posner’s production must have fitted beautifully into the 150-seat Ustinov Studio of Bath’s Theatre Royal, where it originated last year.
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Whether there are enough like minds in London to fill the 893-seat Haymarket is another matter. I hope so, because the attempt to remake this venerable theatre into a home for short-run, prestige projects – The Score with Brian Cox also came in via Bath – is an honourable one. Peter McKintosh’s set of peeling wallpaper and matchstick furniture looks a little stretched on this stage, however.
But back to the plot. Rattigan based The Deep Blue Sea on his secret relationship with actor Kenny Morgan who left him for another man and then gassed himself. When he wrote it, homosexuality and suicide were criminal acts. And here it’s very clear from Farrell’s gentle, contained performance that Bill is gay, even if he doesn’t know it. Although Freddie is fatally attractive to women, and has some sort of genuine passion for Hester, he too may unwittingly prefer the company of men; he’s lost without the framework of wartime camaraderie.
Hester is the only person on stage blessed with self-awareness (except perhaps Miller). She is also more intelligent than the men in her life and lets them know it. When she masters her anguish, her tongue has a sardonic, scolding edge. This is something Greig excels at, the blending of wit, rage and hurt, and it’s tremendous to see her back on form after the emotional contortions forced on her by her last play in London, Backstroke.
Fraser is also very good. He shows us Freddie’s charm as well as his blithe carelessness and he’s very convincing as a drunk. Farrell and Lynch are trustworthy as ever in neatly drawn parts. The roles of the landlady Mrs Elton (Selina Cadell) and the young couple upstairs are less convincing – they’re very much an upper-middle class man’s idea of what “ordinary” people are like.
Towards the end Rattigan strays from empathy towards a Tennessee Williams-ish cruelty in the relentless humiliation of Hester. But it finishes on an image of hope, which is sold with utter conviction by Greig. I hope her performance packs out the Haymarket.
Theatre Royal Haymarket, to June 21; trh.co.uk
