To see yourself as the world sees you may be very brave, but it can also be very foolish

The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...

The Deep Blue Sea : Theatre Royal Haymarket 

My first visit to a Terrance Rattigan play, although I remember doing The Winslow Boy back in school and finding it surprisingly enjoyable (because most of the stuff we did was perfectly dreadful). It's also my second visit with Tamsin Greig this year - I was hoping for something more relatable than my previous trip.

And well, it was and it wasn't. The play is set in a single room and follows Hester (Tamsin Greig), a middle-aged woman, in the wake of a suicide attempt brought about by her relationships with her estranged husband (Nicholas Farrell) and her current lover (Hadley Fraser). And it's relatable because the plot is pretty straightforward to follow - you understand everyone's personalities and drivers, with no-one behaving in a manner which seems unexpected. However, it's not relatable (for me, at least) because everyone's just so damn repressed, although I imagine that some of it was actually pretty wild for the time (it was written in '52) - a WOMAN leaving her HUSBAND?!? 

Hester is very much the central character of the play - I imagine it's viewed as a good role for an actress who wants to be taken seriously and Tamsin does a good job here. She portrays her various frustrations well and, despite her obvious unhappiness, it's not a completely bleak role, ending with a glimmer of optimism which gives you some hope for her future. The rest of the cast do an adequate job, but they felt constrained by the characters to me - I will call out Finbar Lynch as Dr Miller who managed to bring a bit more humanity to the role than most.

The plot of the play was so straightforward that I was wondering whether there was more at play, with Hester actually having killed herself and all the characters were representing different parts of her personality, balancing up her life to judge her. Or maybe they were all to be viewed as representing barriers to independence of all women in general. But no, having checked in Wikipedia and various other places, it appears as though it's simply a play about a suicidal woman. Happy days!

Wikipedia does tell me that the play is based around the breakdown of Rattigan's secret relationship with Kenny Morgan and in the first draft, the main character was in a homosexual relationship, but I suspect that might have been just a bit too racy for the early 50s. Hester has attracted some pretty heavyweight actresses to the role across the years, having first been played by Peggy Ashcroft with Sheila Hancock, Dorothy Tutin, Penelope Keith, Penelope Wilton and Harriet Walter also having portrayed her - all of whom went on to become Dames. It's also been done as a Terence Davies film with Rachel Weisz and was Helen McCrory's last theatrical role at the National Theatre before her untimely death. 

I feel a bit mean because there was nothing wrong with this - it was well set, acted and directed with a good central performance in a fine venue. But I just couldn't get with that 50's repression - maybe I'd have run with it on a different night and enjoyed it a bit more, but I just left feeling a bit annoyed at the whole thing. I did enjoy it more than my last visit with Tamsin though so if you fancy it, it's on for one more week and tickets are still available.

Natalie Palamides - A great night at a great venue