It was a delight to see these two top-notch Rattigan revivals at the Oxford Playhouse. Headliners are Sîan Phillips (Mrs Railton-Bell) who some will remember for 1976 BBC television series I, Claudius, and Nathaniel Parker (Major Pollock/Andrew Crocker-Harris) of the BBC’s The Inspector Lynley Mysteries. They are joined by 13 other outstanding cast members, including Lolita Cakrabarti as Miss Cooper and Millie Crocker-Harris.
This elegant double bill is produced by Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Living Theatre Productions. Olivier award winner James Dacre directs. A national tour which began in Bath ends on February 15 in Oxford.
Terence Rattigan was a closeted gay man from an upper class background who enjoyed his theatrical heyday in the 1950s. Failed relationships and emotional and sexual repression amongst the upper classes are frequent themes of his work, which includes The Browning Version and two one-act plays Separate Tables. Table Number Seven is the second of this pairing.
Just two years after the premiere of Separate Tables Rattigan’s work was violently eclipsed by the ‘Kitchen Sink’ dramas of Osborne, Pinter, Wesker and Sillitoe. Rattigan was embittered by his fall from popularity but a decade later congratulated Joe Orton on Entertaining Mr Sloane, in which he invested £3,000.
Table Number Seven opens the evening. Drab tones and ‘sensible’ clothes predominate in the evocative set and costumes by Mike Britton. The stage turns, opening to scrutiny a residential Bournemouth hotel where a number of single, elderly long-term residents are living out their lonely lives.
Sîan Phillips is magnificently waspish and commanding as Mrs Railton-Bell. Alexandra Dowling, Rosalind Lailey and Pamela Miles give vivid performances as fellow residents trapped in the hotel’s daily ritual, presided over by Lolita Chakrabarti in an empathetic performance as the hotel’s manager.
But there’s something suspect about their likeably bluff fellow resident Major Pollock (Nathaniel Parker). Following the version Rattigan drafted for a New York performance, it’s soon revealed that Pollock is ‘made differently’ and has been bound over for importuning men on the esplanade. Two gripping scenes see the hapless victim first tried by his peers and then achieve a kind of apotheosis in the moving final moments of the play.
The Browning Version is set in another suffocating environment, a boy’s boarding school. Andrew Crocker-Harris teaches the classics but his life is falling apart. His wife no longer loves him, his passion for teaching has gone and he is due to leave the school. Crocker-Harris may be a ‘shrivelled man’ but after a ‘shameful exhibition of emotion’ he too achieves an apotheosis thanks to the Browning version.
Lolita Chakrabarti was magnificent as scarlet-clad Mrs Crocker-Harris, utterly remorseless and wreathed in menacing cigarette smoke. Nathaniel Parker gives a rich and engaging performance as the apparently doomed teacher, with fine performances by other members of the cast including Bertie Hawes as pupil John Taplow.
David Woodward
