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| Marta Dusseldorp in rehearsal for The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan Sydney Theatre Company Photo: Brett Boardman |
Reviewed by Frank McKone
February 15
Director – Paige Rattray; Designer – David Fleischer; Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper; Composer and Sound Designer – James Brown.
Assistant Director – Kenneth Moraleda; Fight and Movement Director – Nigel Poulton; Voice and Text Coach – Charmian Gradwell.
Cast:
Hester Collyer – Marta Dusseldorp; Freddie Page - Fayssal Bazzi; William Collyer – Matt Day
Mr Miller – Paul Capsis; Mrs Elton – Vanessa Downing
Philip Welch – Brandon McClelland; Ann Welch – Contessa Treffone; Jackie Jackson – Charlie Garber
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The play begins with a beautiful scene. A blue ocean extends beyond our horizon as if it stretches on forever.The sky is a clear uninterrupted pale blue.
In the ocean is a tiny island, dark against the light. A point of focus in this Deep Blue Sea. This is Hester. She is her tiny island – her dark world.
By the end of the play we understand, as Mr (one-time Dr) Miller tells Hester, “… the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.”
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| Marta Dusseldorp and Paul Capsis as Hester Collyer and Mr Miller in The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan Production Photos: Daniel Boud |
Why is clearly-gay Miller no longer entitled to be ‘Dr’? Because in 1950s Britain, homosexuality was a crime, punishable by jail.
Suicide was also a crime, though quite what the Christian belief behind the law imagined would be the punishment is a moot question. Of course, to attempt suicide….
What if, though, you were a woman, daughter of a local vicar, marrying ‘above’ your station into the expectations of the ‘greater public school’ men – wealthy, elite?
And that’s before the play now begins, after ten months in love with a dashing RAF wartime fighter pilot – a famous but by now insecure past-his-prime test pilot. Where did Lady Hester Collyer meet Freddie? At the elite golf club, Sunningdale, of course.
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| Matt Day and Marta Dusseldorp as Sir William Collyer and Lady Hester |
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| Marta Dusseldorp and Fayssal Bazzi as Hester and Freddie |
Does this sound like your cup-of-tea, in modern Australia? You’ll be surprised. Just as director Paige Rattray describes: “When I went to see the 2015 production at the National Theatre in London, I was aware of Rattigan’s reputation as an observer of the British middle-class, a society playwright, but was not prepared to meet one of the most complex, nuanced and thoroughly human female characters in the history of Western theatre.”
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| Scene changing by actors in character - the 'fourth wall' is broken L-R: Contessa Treffone, Vanessa Downing, Brandon McClelland, Marta Dusseldorp and stage crew as Ann Welch (neighbour), Mrs Elton (landlady), Philip Welch (neighbour), Hester Collyer |
It worries me that the image in Rattigan’s play of the ‘deep blue sea’, which is attractive and offers the possibility of hope, is nowadays seen as ‘the black dog’, seemingly a vicious threat to escape from. But Marta’s characterisation of Rattigan’s Lady Hester Collyer catches us out. She achieves wonderfully the intention that director Paige has for this production:
“In moving Hester through her despair, through her reliance on other people to a place where she can exist for and with herself”…we have a “model for a new way to look at life, and a new way to survive it.”
If you had thought, as I had, that Terence Rattigan had less to offer than, say, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams or others of his era, Sydney Theatre Company proves us to be mistaken.
Not to be missed.
