'Hedda Gabler- albeit in a very English milieu': Greta Scaacchi and Bruce Lockhart in Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea.
Received wisdom has it that Terence Rattigan ceased to be a major playwright on May 8 1956, the night that Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court. Rattigan attended the performance with the leading West End impresario "Binkie" Beaumont, both of whom attempted to leave, knowing what the play's success would mean for their careers.
John Osborne's incendiary work wasn't just an attack on the hypocrisy of the establishment, but a damning indictment of the "well made play" that was highly popular in the West End at the time. Afterwards, Rattigan, who had been arguably Britain's best known living playwright with such major successes as Separate Tables and The Winslow Boy, continued to write, but with nothing like the same success or acclaim that he had previously received. Moving to Bermuda in 1967 as a tax exile, only a knighthood in 1971 revived his fortunes before his death in 1977.
Two major revivals of one of his most acclaimed plays, The Deep Blue Sea, have once again focused attention on Rattigan. The touring production with Greta Scacchi has received strong reviews, and has been playing to virtually full houses in its run so far. The eagerly awaited Gate Theatre Dublin's production, its Irish premiere, promises to be similarly successful. A recent revival of his late play Man and Boy, with David Suchet, was praised, as was the Oxford Stage Company's revival of his all-but-forgotten early play After the Dance, which had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Upon its return, Michael Billington described it as "one of Rattigan's finest studies of the English vice of emotional repression".
Always a favourite with the public due to his rich characterisation, witty dialogue and focus on strong storytelling, Rattigan is now starting to receive his due from the critical establishment who were so keen to desert him post-1956. (The irony is that it is Osborne who now seems like the more dated of the two writers.) It now no longer seems fanciful for Rattigan to be described as the English Ibsen, with his unwavering focus on families being torn apart by the sins of the past. The two dramatists also share strong yet flawed female characters. In in her abandonment of her steady but dull husband for her childish ex-fighter-pilot lover, Hester Collyer, protagonist of The Deep Blue Sea, can be compared to Hedda Gabler - albeit in a very English milieu. What appears at first to be sentimental, middle-class wish-fulfilment invariably reveals itself to be far darker and more resonant.
Even his need to camouflage his characters' homosexuality behind euphemism and role-playing can now be seen as a fascinating game of double-bluff, with occasional moments that seem shocking even today, such as the tycoon Gregor Antonescu's attempt, in Man and Boy, to pimp his own son to a business rival in return for advancement. None other than the no longer brain-dead liberal David Mamet had shown his Rattigan appreciation in 1999 with his film of The Winslow Boy, with its key interrogation scene between the barrister Sir Robert Chiltern and the titular protagonist Ronnie as good an example of misdirection and loaded language as anything in Mamet's own drama.
It's possible to see his influence in a range of new writing, especially in Polly Stenham's acclaimed That Face, which itself draws on the traditions of the "well-made play" to powerful, surprising and moving effect. Rattigan would no doubt be pleased to know that his reputation, after suffering a catastrophic decline in his lifetime, is once again returning to its former heights. Perhaps as tipped The Deep Blue Sea will once again be lighting up Shaftesbury Avenue.
