Somehow the closed-in constraints and skilfully contrived dramaturgy of a ‘well-made-play’, set in a single room in linear time, is especially appropriate for a drama about loves that dare not speak their names: male homosexuality and female erotic passion.  

Because homosexuality was illegal throughout his career, Terence Rattigan – like his contemporary Tennessee Williams in the USA (and, 10 years their junior, Bruce Mason in NZ) – was obliged to depict ‘love’ only in cis-gendered heterosexual relationships. In the 1950s, Williams wrote of Maggie’s sexual frustration in the face of injured football star Brick’s indifference in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, while Rattigan – in The Deep Blue Sea – dramatised Hester’s passionate attraction to ex-flying ace but now out-of-work Freddie, causing her to leave her husband, a well-to-do judge, only to find her physical desires unrequited. Both Brick and Freddie are drinking too much and Freddie’s trips away for golf may or may not be cover for clandestine assignations.

Neither play could explicitly reveal that both Brick and Freddie were gay; nor could Maggie or Hester’s sexual desires be openly affirmed and celebrated. In the 1950s both homosexuality and attempted suicide were illegal, and in the UK the Lord Chamberlain still had the power to ban plays under the Theatre Act (repealed, at last, in 1968). While The Deep Blue Sea only hints that Freddie Page is gay – he speaks of “The way I am” as an immutable impediment to giving Hester what she wants – it is clear that suicide has been attempted and cannot be reported to police.

The upside of this downward pressure is that Rattigan artfully employs subtext – which he greatly admired in Chekhov, according to Benedict Cumberbatch’s excellent BBC Four investigation, The Rattigan Enigma. It could be argued that this shift in tone from the relative artifice of Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward reflected the morally repressive climate of post-war Britain.

In this 2016 National Theatre production directed by Carrie Cracknell (presented in the end-on Lyttelton Theatre), designer Tom Schutt’s set foregrounds the Ladbroke Grove flat in West London within a larger structure; a ghostly stairwell looms in the background. Guy Hoare’s lighting design emphasises shadows as much as small pools of light, alerting us to seek out what’s hidden beyond what is seen. Stuart Earl’s music, within Peter Rice’s sound design, establishes the obsessive love theme with the 1930s romantic song ‘I Only have Eyes for You’ (by composer Harry Warren and Al Dubin).

The play opens with urgent voices in the dark and the discovery that Hester Collyer – erroneously called Mrs Page by the landlady and neighbours – has attempted to gas herself, saved only by the gas meter’s need of another shilling. The action that follows adroitly reveals why her life has come to this by characterising the post-war culture and values that have brought it about.

It is a huge challenge for an actress to manifest a woman who is at the end of her tether yet credibly remains loved by two very different men, despite her own low self-esteem. Helen McCrory embodies Hester’s extremities superbly, behaving in company as befits the daughter of a clergyman so that her repressed passions burst forth to heart-rending dramatic effect.  

As the conflicted Freddie Page, Tom Burke sparks with the flair that makes him attractive to Hester while wrestling privately with his dilemma and resorting to ‘cruel to be kind’ strategies to break free of her. Even as we watch their relationship collapse, we can imagine what wonderful fun they had in the first few carefree months.

Because Freddie is away on another ‘golf weekend’ on the fateful night, the landlady Mrs Elton (Marion Bailey) and well-meaning neighbours, Philip (Hubert Burton) and Ann Welch (Yolanda Kettle) call the judge, Sir William Collyer (Peter Sullivan). When he returns later, in his new Rolls Royce, and behaves like a perfect gentleman, it is clear why Hester would have accepted the promising lawyer’s proposal. While it is also clear that their respectable marriage lacked passion, and William’s judgemental outburst about the inappropriateness of Hester’s “infatuation” epitomises the repressive status quo, we are given space to weigh up for ourselves the choices Hester is faced with, stuck as she is “between the devil and the deep blue sea”.  

The enigmatic Mr Miller (Nick Fletcher), a struck-off doctor who specialised in infantile paralysis and lives in the same block of flats, allows Hester to get necessary medical attention without the practitioner being obliged to report it. A German who “has spoken only English since 1938”, he does not moralise, making it clear that Hester has every right to determine her own destiny. Ironically having that freedom dilutes her desire to escape through death.

According to an essay on the National Theatre Blog, entitled ‘Terence Rattigan the outcast’, “it is implied in the play that Mr Miller, the doctor with whom Collyer forms an emotional connection, was struck off for a homosexual offence. Indeed, some claim that Collyer was originally written as a man, but changed gender at the last minute: there is no physical evidence for this, though Rattigan himself reportedly once claimed it to be the case in a letter to John Osborne.”* But if Sir William had left Hester for Freddie, the original play would have been radically different, requiring much more than a last-minute rewrite.

I am more inclined to look for unresolved sexual tension between Freddie and his ex-RAF buddy Jackie Jackson (Adetomiwa Edun). Their scene together allows Freddie to reveal his attitude to what has happened and how his relationship with Hester has turned out. Yes, Jackie is married – which is entirely consistent with how some gay men lived in the ’50s. But Rattigan has Freddie saying his problem is that Hester’s passion is too over-the-top while he, a dashing flying ace no less, believes in “moderation in all things”. To me, this is what reeks of a rewrite to satisfy the Lord Chamberlain.

Then there is Philip Welch, who spends hours with Freddie at “that new club down the road” (surely the queer community would nod knowingly at that) before reporting back to Hester. By way of counselling Hester, Philip tells of his own infatuation with a young woman that nearly wrecked his marriage before he took stock and saw the error of his ways. This, too, could be code for a married man resisting his attraction to a young man and conforming to the status quo, thus offering Hester an unwitting insight into what Freddie would be doing if he tried to make a go of it with her.

As with The Plays of Bruce Mason (see chapter 15: A Clandestine Life…) we can only guess what might have emerged had playwrights like Terence Rattigan been free to write openly about gay relationships and lifestyles. Meanwhile The Deep Blue Sea offers timeless insights into the conflicting natures of love.
 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
*It was Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) that relegated Rattigan and West End theatre manager Binkie Beaumont’s other favourites to the reserve benches in favour of George Devine’s new wave of ‘angry young playwrights’. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer