People who use internet dating sites quickly adopt a heuristic approach to choosing a potential partner. Women are apparently pretty quick to reject those men pictured with very large fish, doubly so if they - the men - are shirtless. Men, or so I am told, are prone to avoid women whose photos include horses, comedy spectacles, inflatable sumo wrestling outfits...well you get the idea. However, the women to be avoided at all costs by any chap wishing for a quiet life are surely those who describe themselves as a 'hopeless romantic'.
The relevance of this is that Freddy Page (ably played by Tom Burke, recently seen as Dolokhov in the very same BBC production of War and Peace mentioned here only yesterday) would have done well to heed that advice. The central hook on which the play hangs is that he can no more give Hester Collyer (Helen McCrory, last seen on these pages appearing in Medea) what she longs for than could the husband whom she left to be with him. Freddy, I think it's fair to say, has no hidden depths. During the war, when he served with distinction in the RAF and as a test pilot, this presumably helped him to cope. When Hester indicated her availability it would have been his focus on the immediate moment rather than thinking through the implications (socially devastating at that time) that made him respond as he did. There is a moral here for women looking for a bit of extramarital excitement; but what would I know about that?
The play has dated. The central role still has validity which is helpful because, as the director has said, there aren't many strong female roles around. That in itself is ironic because the genesis of the play is in the end of one of Rattigan's gay relationships, which was transmuted to a heterosexual one because it could not otherwise have been staged. And that's one of the problems: in the 21st century not only does the whole divorce/unmarried cohabiting stigma not resonate, but nor would the real repressed passion behind it all. In addition all the other characters are no longer recognisable in society. The dashing war hero who has lost his raison d'être means nothing to my children's generation, although presumably heartfelt at the time (Ratiigan himself saw active service in Bomber Command); Miller, the Page's neighbour, has clearly been interned as an enemy alien at some point, but the reference to this goes over the head of the audience in the National Theatre auditorium who laugh instead at what they believe to be a derogatory reference to the denizens of the Isle of Man; Sir William Collyer and his like are still running the country, but are considerably more socially liberal these days and are unlikely to make turgid speeches about wifely duty, or indeed take their summer holidays at Sunningdale; and as for the (token) white working class character being a repository of tolerance - do me a favour.
After the first act the women in the audience were all but shouting "He's not worth it" - spoiler alert; he's not - while I was comparing it to 'Anna Karenina' and 'A Doll's House'. To be honest it's more like those blended with 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' or Martin Amis' short novel 'Time's Arrow'. So, well acted and staged, but not much more.
A fried egg sandwich features as the action comes to an end. I have a vaguely amusing, and true, story about one of those and an LSD trip, but sadly I have neither the space nor time to include it here.
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