The whirligig of time, as Shakespeare observed, brings in its revenges. Virtually banished in his later years by the Royal Court revolution, Terence Rattigan is now in constant revival and this 1943 farce comes up fresh as paint in Paul Miller’s strongly cast production.
The plot revolves around a young earl’s impending marriage to the daughter of an impoverished Scottish duke. The problem is that, on the wedding eve, a muscular American bombardier and a passionate French lieutenant find themselves smitten by the future bride, which leads to a middle act full of buoyant confusion.
You could argue that Rattigan trades in national stereotypes and sees women as either virgins or vamps but his play is an elegant construct full of coded messages. The earl, in particular, is a sexually ambivalent figure unusually ready to share his bed with his amatory rivals. He is also repeatedly seen as an emblem of a doomed class. When he protests that he reads the New Statesman, he is briskly told: “That will not save you from extinction.”
But, while the play hints at familiar Rattigan themes of English emotional diffidence and impending social change, it is chiefly enjoyable for the ingenuity of its plotting. It is also superbly played, with Philip Labey lending the earl an aristocratic effeteness offset by the unmasked virility of Julian Moore-Cook as the American and the volcanic explosiveness of Jordan Mifsud as the Frenchman. Sabrina Bartlett as the gauche bride and Dorothea Myer-Bennett as a good-hearted predator invest their characters with exceptional substance and the whole show suggests that Rattigan, even at his most effervescently escapist, reveals more of himself than he realises.
• At the Orange Tree, Richmond, until 27 July.
