SEPARATE TABLES. To 13 May.
Manchester
SEPARATE TABLES
by Terence Rattigan
Royal Exchange Theatre To 13 May 2006
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm
Audio-described 29 April 4pm
BSL Signed 6 May 4pm
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 9339833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 April
Society has moved on; so has theatre. But Rattigan has near-classic stature.
Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan were twin playwriting stars summing-up those banished in 1956 by the unexpected ascendency of Look Back in Anger and its Royal Court successors. Both were highly popular, both were gay. But while Coward kept his sexuality under wrappers for a decade until A Song at Twilight, Rattigan twice tried to make a gay theme text rather than subtext. Neither attempt reached the stage.
He was persuaded to rewrite The Deep Blue Sea with a woman at its suicidal centre. In the second of his related one-act dramas Separate Tables, a rewrite (intended for American production) introduced the gay element, making his Major’s sexual indiscretions involve young men rather than women. What fifties Broadway rejected Manchester 2006 tries out. It strengthens the courage of those in a genteel Bournemouth boarding-house who support Major Pollock. And it makes his sexuality core to his life’s wider lies, thereby judging the social mores that condemn him.
But there’s a downside. For it stuffs an ‘issue’ among the world Rattigan otherwise characterises with such studied balance. This isn’t helped at Manchester by Nigel Cooke’s absurd-looking Pollock, who strides around with a mix of youthful energy and old-buffer bluster, his knee-length trousers enough to banish him from dinner-time in the traditionally-orientated Beauregard Hotel (bare calves? In a Bournemouth winter?).
Significantly, the Beauregard is one of a group, managed rather than owned by Alexandra Mathie’s outwardly-confident, emotionally-controlled yet independently-minded Miss Cooper. Mathie represents Sarah Frankcom’s generally recommendable production at its best, suggesting a life below her elegant, neat exterior, never pushing emotion at key points. The suggestion of something underneath the surface is as important in serious Rattigan as full-frontal expression was to be in Anger.
Clare Holman has it in her on-the-fade middle-aging model Ann Shankland and, in the second play, her Sybil Railton-Bell. (This character, struggling from the shade of her overbearing aunt acquires a different stance with regard to Pollock than in the play’s conventional version.) Ann Firbank’s soft yet certain Lady Mathieson also shines particularly bright. Observe, too, the Strattons, this author’s pre-Osborne bickering young people.
John Malcolm/Major Pollock: Nigel Cooke
Ann Shankland/Sybil Railton-Bell: Clare Holman
Miss Cooper: Alexandra Mathie
Mts Railton-Bell: Janet Henfrey
Lady Matheson: Ann Firbank
Mabel: Julia Rounthwaite
Miss Meacham: Shuna Snow
Doreen: Emma Kearney
Mr Fowler: Ian Barritt
Charles Stratton: Christopher Harper
Jean Tanner/Jean Stratton: Abigail Davies
Casual Woman: Kate Gilbert
Casual Man: Paul Leeming
Director: Sarah Frankcom
Designer: Ti Green
Lighting: Colin Grenfell
Sound: Peter Rice
Fights: Kate Waters
2006-04-17 17:27:00