Sadly, the National Theatre will soon stop uploading free full theatre performances to their YouTube channel. Their penultimate upload to the ‘National Theatre at Home’ series was their 2016 production of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea (1952), directed by Carrie Cracknell.
Set in West London in 1952, the play begins with Hester Collyer (Helen McCrory) crumpled in front of the gas fire in her apartment. Her neighbours attempt to rouse her and quickly realise that she attempted suicide last night. The ostensible reason for her suicide attempt was that her partner Freddie had forgotten her birthday and went off drinking with some friends that night instead. It gradually transpires that Hester is in the process of divorcing her affluent, respectable husband because she is having an affair with Freddie. However, instead of finding happiness, Hester has traded one type of unhappiness for another. Her former husband Sir William Collyer is in love with the idea of her and wants to win her back, or in her own words, ‘I’m just some prized possession who becomes more prized having been stolen.’ Hester’s current relationship with former fighter pilot Freddie is tumultuous and she is aware that Freddie doesn’t love her with the same intensity that she loves him. Nonetheless, she is infatuated and wants to salvage their relationship. When Freddie is offered a job in South America as a test pilot - a truly dangerous job with a high death rate (n.b. Freddie is out of work because he flew a plane whilst drunk during his last job position in Canada. He’d never have been offered this new job if the company knew) - he decides to take it. Hester knows their relationships is over but is willing to do whatever it takes to make him stay.
The set, designed by Tom Scutt, is incredible. Scutt has successfully managed to create the impression of a lived-in apartment. The innovative use of translucent walls allows the audience to see silhouettes of figures walking on the staircase or in the bedroom. The stage is enormous yet so little space is occupied by the players that it almost borders on overindulgence. I was grateful that the person filming included a mix of close-ups and wide-angle shots, as audience members sitting far back in the 890-seat Lyttelton Theatre when the play was filmed may have struggled to see! Moreover, in my opinion, close-up shots of the actors’ facial expressions played an integral part in generating the play’s emotional impact, whilst the wide-angled shots helped establish the setting and era.
Helen McCrory gives a standout performance, undulating between the extremities of human emotion, whilst also conveying the multifarious shades of feeling in between. McCrory offers a complex portrait of the emotional fallout after failed romances. Her Hester is self-loathing, desperate, amorous, resigned, hopeful, deceived, deluded, manipulative, yet ultimately a character with whom we can empathise. The remainder of the cast are strong. Marion Bailey plays Mrs Elton, the worldly landlady who sympathises with Hester’s worries about money, men, and job prospects. Freddie Page (Tom Burke) is an egocentric, feckless, self-sabotaging borderline alcoholic who we cannot completely blame for his lukewarm feelings towards Hester. William Collyer (Peter Sullivan) is an attractive socialite who fails to fully grasp Hester’s own needs and desires, instead viewing her as a valuable commodity and an opportunity to enhance his own social standing.
Cracknell succeeds in gradually building up a composite picture of England in the 1950s, a time when suicide was illegal, when homosexuality was a criminal offence, when divorces were hard to obtain, when living with a partner before marriage would have been incredibly scandalous, and when job prospects for women were pretty limited. The characters also span the social classes, with young, middle-class neighbours, a working-class landlady, a female lead struggling to make a living as a freelance artist, and a high court judge.
The Deep Blue Sea is an accomplished play that raises profound questions about what it means to be in love. It grapples with the complexity of romantic feeling, the difficulty of breaking off potentially destructive relationships, and the universal themes of despair, loneliness, and hope. I would rate this performance four out of five stars.
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