Senior school actors impress in end of term production of The Deep Blue Sea

In the final week of term, a highly accomplished group of senior actors took to the stage with a production of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 tragedy, The Deep Blue Sea.

The play begins with a woman stretched out beside a gas fire – Hester Collyer, driven to suicidal despair by her love for Freddie Page, an alcoholic ex-fighter pilot who left part of himself in the sky. Hester has left her wealthy and adoring husband, Sir William Collyer, for Freddie and a cheap bedsit on the wrong side of town.

We are accustomed to extraordinary sets in the Barnes Theatre, but particular thanks must go to Adam Wall and Bradley Fenton for their beautiful rendition of Hester’s flat, suspended in time and space and painted a sludgy aquamarine. Judgemental neighbours Eva G (G, UVI), Lwsi R (M, UVI) and Jack S (R, UVI) came and went on the stairs, reinforcing the sense of claustrophobia and gossip.

Rattigan’s plays often explore unrequited love stories. As a gay man in the 1950s, he and his friends knew what it was like to love the wrong people. As Freddie laconically puts it: ‘A loves B. B doesn’t love A – or at least, not in the same way’. The central triangle of Hester, Freddie and Collyer – played with subtlety and maturity by Kate W (M, UVI), Rufus T (Ch, UVI) and Ed P (, UVI) – are all sympathetic in their own ways, as they try and fail to love and be loved.

If the play asks a crucial question – how do you go on when the one you love doesn’t love you back – it also offers answers. Freddie’s drinking buddy Jonny – a brilliant comic cameo by Sam U (S, UVI) – suggests empathy: ‘Don’t you think you could at least try and see things from her point of view?’ Eleanor K’s (MSH, UVI) down-to-earth landlady, Mrs Elton, believes in the healing properties of tea and a chat. However, it is the nihilistic Dr Miller (Laurie M (Rb, UVI)) who ultimately convinces Hester that there is life beyond love.

The play ends without an obvious resolution – Hester is alone by the fireplace once more, but we do not know whether or not she will turn on the gas tap. I think not: Rattigan’s elegy to heartbreak allows for the belief that she will indeed ‘Fail again. Fail better.’

Helen Brown

Director of Drama and Deputy Head (Co-Curricular)