The Deep Blue Sea, National Theatre

[alnoor]

Have never been able to see this on stage.
Looking forward to it.
Now been told it stars Helen McCrory
Can't wait to get tickets

[vickster51]

I've been waiting for casting for this and this is a promising start. I enjoyed the production in Chichester a few years ago, so I'll definitely go and see it.

[MrBunbury]

That sounds great. I was speaking to a friend last weekend and we thought that Helen McCrory could be the lead since she worked before with Carrie Cracknell. To make the most of this sudden gist of prescience, I will buy a crystal ball and read the future of fellow bloggers in the foyer of the National Theatre in the weekends...

[rumbledoll]

Considered missing this (can't say a word about the play itself, didn't like the film - too bloody depressive, characters unlikable all over), but the prospects of having the marvelous Helen McCrory as the lead changes everything! Wonder about male parts now.. )

[caa]

I wonder if Carrie Cracknell will use dancing in the production?

[stefy69]

I'll certainly be going can never get enough Terence Rattigan.

[Polly1]

Jan 29, 2016 19:59:26 GMT rumbledoll said:

Considered missing this (can't say a word about the play itself, didn't like the film - too bloody depressive, characters unlikable all over), but the prospects of having the marvelous Helen McCrory as the lead changes everything! Wonder about male parts now.. )

Film was very disappointing, it cut out all the light and shade/humour from the play. Give it a go, it's a great play and McCrory will be ace.

[lynette]

Didn't I see this with a Redgrave in it a bit ago at Almeida? Is it considered a brilliant play? Of course MCrory will rock but I'd like to see her in something contemporary after Medea.

[n1david]

Jan 30, 2016 16:56:11 GMT lynette said:

Didn't I see this with a Redgrave in it a bit ago at Almeida? Is it considered a brilliant play? Of course MCrory will rock but I'd like to see her in something contemporary after Medea.

Penelope Wilton and Linus Roache in the production I saw at the Almeida, although I was staggered to read it was 1993:
www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/may/25/great-performances-penelope-wilton-the-deep-blue-sea

Natasha Richardson was in another sea-play there, The Lady from the Sea, 2003.

[Jan]

Jan 30, 2016 17:30:46 GMT n1david said:

Natasha Richardson was in another sea-play there, The Lady from the Sea, 2003.

With Benedict Cumberbatch doing what he does best (a small supporting role). 

[gillianbird]

Ugh. I wish their first choice had said yes. Mrs Lewis = wild horses.

[Polly1]

Jan 30, 2016 21:29:15 GMT gillianbird said:

Ugh. I wish their first choice had said yes. Mrs Lewis = wild horses.

Go on then, I'll bite - who was their first choice?

[joem]

It's a very good play but revived very often. Think I saw it with Greta Scacchi? I do wish they'd give us a chance of seeing Rattigans which haven't been performed in decades, sometimes since the first production.

[stefy69]

Feb 2, 2016 0:19:49 GMT joem said:

It's a very good play but revived very often. Think I saw it with Greta Scacchi? I do wish they'd give us a chance of seeing Rattigans which haven't been performed in decades, sometimes since the first production.

Couldn't agree more joem, there are plays of TR I've never seen and would dearly love to  and yes you're right about Greta Scacchi I saw it to at the Vaudeville Theatre with Simon Williams as her husband an excellent production of a fine fine play

[caa]

Jan 31, 2016 1:12:28 GMT Polly1 said:

Jan 30, 2016 21:29:15 GMT gillianbird said:

Ugh. I wish their first choice had said yes. Mrs Lewis = wild horses.

Go on then, I'll bite - who was their first choice?

If Helen McCrory wasn't the first choice, I wonder who it was, am I right in thinking Hestor is in her early 40's - In that case I would have liked to see Nancy Carroll, but then not everyone likes her either.

[Polly1]

Feb 2, 2016 13:30:40 GMT caa said:

Jan 31, 2016 1:12:28 GMT Polly1 said:

Go on then, I'll bite - who was their first choice?

If Helen McCrory wasn't the first choice, I wonder who it was, am I right in thinking Hestor is in her early 40's - In that case I would have liked to see Nancy Carroll, but then not everyone likes her either.

Oh, I'm with you, would love to see Nancy Carroll play this role, she would be sublime. She is actually closer (haha!) to the right age too - Hester is described as middle thirties, Carroll is 41, McCrory (amazingly) 47.

[alnoor]

Extra dates now on sale with lots of £15 seats.

[TheatreDust]

Just noticed this thread - I'd not even been aware of this play until I went to see 'Kenny Morgan' at the weekend.

Hopefully I will now get to see Deep Blue Sea - and forgive me for cross-posting, but I highly recommend 'Kenny Morgan' - theatreboard.co.uk/thread/901/kenny-morgan-arcola-theatre given the close links between the two plays.


Edit:  Thanks to the tip in this thread, I've just booked a £15 ticket to see Deep Blue Sea!

[Steve]

This is very good. Be aware, you have to be a mature human being, which I struggle with, to fully appreciate it.

What I mean by this is that most of Rattigan's plays have far more comic relief than this one does, when dealing with essentially the same subject.

The subject, and I think Rattigan is always marvellous on it, is the impossibility of love. Rattigan never ever pretends he knows anything about it, just describes it's enormous power and it's devastating consequences.

Recalling other recent wonderful Rattigan revivals: in "French without Tears," noone could figure out how to love AND be happy, except the guy who slept exclusively with prostitutes. But that was a trenchant and hilarious comedy of manners, so the bitterness of Rattigan's essential message never stung. In "After the Dance," characters were severely stung, but at least we, the audience, had Adrian Scarborough's loveable comic relief character to mediate our misery, from his couch. In "Flare Path," Rattigan found a way of side-stepping love's conundrum by trumping it's misery with the grit and cameraderie of the (more important) war effort. And while poor old Crocker-Harris wasn't in the happiest of marriages, in "The Browning Version," at least we approached him at a distance, from the humour and outside vantage point of his students. With all these plays, there was some counterpoint to the sheer misery of being ineffectual in love, of never being able to balance passion and tenderness, of being caught in an inescapable trap.

This production traps you from the start, and won't let go. Although there are moments of comic relief, and they are wonderfully realised, especially by Marion Bailey's landlady, Mrs. Elton, they are little more than oases in a desrt, and for the most part, we sit and suffer with Helen McCrory's Hester Collyer's agony for a full 2 hours and forty minutes.

Luckily, Carrie Cracknell aids her audience in entering the requisite mood of deep seriousness, with an unassuming but sombre soundtrack that conditions the mind to relax, and away from relieving dramatic tension by inappropriate laughter. I didn't here any of that, so she succeeded. The visuals are big and blue and expansive, as we take in McCrory's scarlet-lettered Hester in the context of the world of her apartment block, able to see other occupants moving up and down stairs at the top of the set behind her.

McCrory inhabits Hester thoroughly, such that we never doubt one single thing she does, and Cracknell blocks her action around the large set of her flat elegantly. Small details add and add up to create utter disconsolation. In one of my favourite detailed moments, Hester simply lies on the floor, just where she was standing, when she finds herself alone.

Peter Sullivan effectively embodies the decency and repression of Hester's husband, William, with a dry delivery that recalls "Brief Encounter." Tom Burke's Freddie Page swings between passion and sang froid, in a moment. But it is Helen McCrory who once again shows what a terrific actress she is, able as she is to suggest a raging torrent of torment and resignation, by the slightest hesitation in responding to a question. One hopes that something of her nuanced performance carries to the back of this enormous theatre.

For a fleeting moment, McCrory and Cracknell brought out the adult in me that I didn't know was there.

4 stars

[stefy69]

Excellent review Steve !

I am so looking forward to this, Terence Rattigan is probably my favourite playwright by far.

[mallardo]

Steve, we were at the same show!! If only you'd posted it in the This Week I am Going to... thread - or if only I had. Where were you sitting, if I may ask? I was in the middle stalls, row M, next to the good-looking brunette.

As to the play, I'm even more than usually interested in your take because mine was unfortunately affected by having seen Kenny Morgan at the Arcola last week. I knew the two plays were closely related - KM being the story behind TDBS - but I hadn't realized that they were virtually identical, sharing characters and structure to the degree that I knew exactly what was coming next last night. Even little bits of business - cleaning Freddie's shoes, such a poignant moment - were appropriated by Mike Poulton for his play which I now have to consider at least as much an adaptation as an original work.

So everything for me was coloured by that. And let me say it here - I think the story works better with a male protagonist, the way it happened in "real life". Or at least it worked better for me at the Arcola with Paul Keating in the lead.

No knock against Helen McCrory who is an amazing actress and fully committed to Hester's desperation. This is a play, after all, about addiction, an addiction as strong and as deadly as that faced by Denise Gough's character in People, Places and Things. We can be addicted to people - especially people who, on some level or other, reject us. And it's frustrating to watch a character fall into that abyss and then choose to remain there when everyone around her is trying to help. But, of course, the point is that any help is futile and much of the humour of the piece - there is some - stems from that sad futility.

But, IMO, the stakes should have been higher in the sense that Freddie, Hester's younger lover and the source of her pain, should be much more of a cad. Tom Burke, another wonderful actor, was just loo likeable for me. Yes, he had his moments of incredible insensitivity that made the audience gasp - the shilling thing especially - but for me the gasps were not because the guy was a brute but because those moments seemed out of character. I could actually understand Hester's infatuation with Freddie - and I'm not sure I'm supposed to.

All this must be tempered by the fact that it played, to me, very much like a preview performance - there were missed cues, some stepping on lines, etc. - and the timing felt just slightly off. That will all improve, of course. I generally liked Carrie Cracknell's production - the transparent walls showing us life going on in the other flats was a nice effect at just the right moments. The actors were all excellent.

But, again, I'll never know how this play and this production would have affected me if it had been my introduction to the story. For me, the copy was the template - and, alas, that changed everything.

[Steve]

Jun 7, 2016 7:47:04 GMT mallardo said:

Where were you sitting, if I may ask? I was in the middle stalls, row M, next to the good-looking brunette. . .

I'm even more than usually interested in your take because mine was unfortunately affected by having seen Kenny Morgan at the Arcola
So everything for me was coloured by that. And let me say it here - I think the story works better with a male protagonist, the way it happened in "real life". Or at least it worked better for me at the Arcola with Paul Keating in the lead.

But, IMO, the stakes should have been higher in the sense that Freddie, Hester's younger lover and the source of her pain, should be much more of a cad. Tom Burke, another wonderful actor, was just loo likeable for me.

Mallardo, I have a membership and am addicted to early-booking the £15 seats at the front of the Lyttelton, preferably Row A, as rows B and C aren't raked. On a sidenote, in hindsight, I might have run into Parsley (not wearing his name badge) on Row A for "Three Days in The Country," when I "lost" my bottle of water, and a gently spoken tall charmer reassured me I wasn't embarrassing myself by getting flustered about it (it was in my bag). He had every bit the bearing of a Doctor, and none of the fierceness Parsley has on this board, so I like to think it was him lol.

Unfortunately for me, I don't think I can manage a night for Kenny Morgan, which I want to see very much, neither being able to find a responsibility I can evade or a ticket I am willing to ditch. I do feel I am missing out.

With regard to Tom Burke, I do agree his was not the most caddish reading of the role. Should you ever see Tom Hiddleston, in the 2011 film version, I think you'd find his dastardly interpretation more to your taste. However, in that film, Simon Russell Beale's Collyer, and his dreadful mother, who is created for and depicted in the film, are far less convincing than Peter Sullivan as someone Hester might have actually married.

What I like about the Tom Burke interpretation is precisely that he is somewhat likeable, as that prevents us judging him, and makes us live with the implacability of circumstances and life in general, rather than having a villain to hiss at.

[hal9000]

I was astonished by how poor Tom Hiddleston was in the movie. He was shooting for and missing a glowering Stanley Kowalski-lite but just seemed, I don't know, to be gurning a lot. Quite bizarre casting and to be honest that film put me off him as an actor for many years.

[stefy69]

Stunning 5 star review for this in today's Times

[Deleted]

Jun 9, 2016 6:12:50 GMT stefy69 said:

Stunning 5 star review for this in today's Times

She gives everything 5 stars

I have seen this play 3 or 4 times

This is NOT a five star or anywhere near a definitive production as the direction is too sloppy

Helen McCrory is good as one would expect

But be honest it's a role she could sleepwalk through

She tends to avoid any sort of risk in her stage roles
Which is surprising as she is a class A actress and could easily afford to take a few risks

This role is quite quite similar to the character she played in The Last Of the Haussmans
Unstable and retrograde in her ideals
Happy to have aspirations
And a lover
Yet exploit the generosity of her husband and make no effort herself financially

There was still some overlapping of lines which sounded like uncertainty in timing rather than intentional and was quite terrible to hear

The acting is fine and the staging is typically high quality as we have come to expect from the NT and particularly this auditorium

However the direction lacks any interest and this is surprising for Carrrie Cracknell
You would think a woman directing it would draw out all sorts of things

But perhaps conversely as we know the background behind the real story a woman director in fact night miss the subtext

Quite frankly I think Hester Collyer is an awfully weak character to whom I have no empathy at all and this is the fault of the playwright in having to transpose the issues to a heterosexual relationship
There is no attempt to explore the depths of anyone and the main characters are paper cutouts
I don't think it has dated terribly well and some of the ideas seem emotionally stunted now

Many of the hysterical love struck women from the Tennessee Williams (take your pick) are more interestingly drawn and therefore offer more depth of viewing
Equally I find Eugene O'neill more dramatically exciting

It's an average evening dull in places but it is hardly revelatory and not worth anywhere near the £60 they think they can charge for the stalls at the weekends

I would say 3 stars

And I wonder if the cast went to see Kenny Morgan?

The director needs to see it I think and see the error of her ways.