A homosexual born into upper-middle-class Britain in 1911, Rattigan had to learn to live a double life and was well aware of the constraints and hypocrisies of the society in which he flourished. In a late play, In Praise of Love (1973), the protagonist, Sebastian, states what is an underlying theme in all Rattigan’s work: ‘Do you know what “Le Vice Anglais” is? Not flagellation, not pederasty – whatever the French believe it to be. It’s our refusal to admit to our emotions. We think they demean us, I suppose.’ As Michael Billington writes, Rattigan’s ‘whole world is a sustained attack on English middle-class values: fear of emotional commitment, terror in the face of passion, apprehension about sex.’

Marta Dusseldorp and Fayssal Bazzi in The Deep Blue Sea (photograph by Daniel Boud)

Hester Collyer, the protagonist of The Deep Blue Sea (1952), is a woman who choses physical love with the younger ex-fighter pilot Freddie Page over her warm but passionless relationship with her barrister husband, Sir William, and is mired in a relationship with a man who lacks the resources to cope with her needs. For some, The Deep Blue Sea is a gay play in which the main character had to be transposed into a woman to appease the Lord Chamberlain, the censor of the time. Certainly, it is based on an actual incident in Rattigan’s life. His younger lover, Kenneth Morgan, left him for another man and killed himself when that relationship collapsed. Writing to John Osborne after the end of censorship in Britain, Rattigan said: ‘At last I can write about my particular sins without Lord Chamberlain induced sex change dishonesty … Perhaps I should rewrite TDBS as it was really meant to be.’ But the play is much stronger with Hester, not Hector, as its protagonist. In 1950s England, a gay imbroglio would have been kept under wraps and the participants would have gone about their everyday lives unscathed. But for a woman to leave her famous, successful husband for a much younger man would immediately make her a social outcast. For Hester, the stakes are much higher than they would have been for Hector.

On paper, the combination of a strong cast and a powerful play promised much. On the stage, however, on opening night, after a visually stunning opening, it was only in the final act that the play reached its potential. David Fleischer’s revolving set worked well and Nick Schlieper’s lighting was effective as always, but the performances were oddly detached. Paige Rattray’s direction seemed directionless. The cast roamed the stage laughing, crying, and yelling on cue, but only occasionally did one get any real sense of who they were.

Perhaps the most successful was Vanessa Downing’s landlady, Mrs Elton. Mercifully eschewing the usual lovable cockney shtick, she gave us a decent bewildered woman, out of her depth but supportive of the woman whom she has decided is her favourite tenant, though she considers attempted suicide to be a sin. In a telling comment, she says: ‘Sad, isn’t it, how one always seems to prefer nice people to good people, don’t you think?’

As Hester’s neighbour, Mr Miller, a doctor who has been jailed and deregistered for what is hinted to be a homosexual act, Paul Capsis at first overdid the camp flourishes, but he came into his own in the final act as the voice of experience. At one stage in his confrontation with Hester, when a line of his produced an unwanted laugh, he fixed the audience with a killer stare that was worthy of Julie Bishop at her most formidable.

Marta Dusseldorp, Paul Capsis, and Matt Day in The Deep Blue Sea (photograph by Daniel Boud)

Sir William Collyer is a prime example of Rattigan’s typical Englishman, well meaning but emotionally stitched up. Matt Day provided the stiff upper lip but didn’t show us the vulnerable side of the man; his performance remained one-dimensional. Fayssal Bazzi as Freddie Page, on the other hand, had two modes, quiet and loud. He bellowed his way through his drunken tirade, but in quieter moments showed us glimpses of the confused boy–man who cannot cope with the passion he has aroused. 

Marta Dusseldorp’s Hester was at first a rather soft, passive creature, with none of the brittle edginess one might expect. She was not helped by the fact that her major confrontations were with the stolid Day and the hyper Bazzi. But by the third act she was firing. Her breakdown in front of Sir William, her final rejection of him, and the withering, amused contempt with which she listened to advice from a well-meaning neighbour were devastating. But it was the desperate vulnerability with which she sought advice from Capsis’s weathered Miller that capped a performance that will surely develop during the run.

The entire production felt underexplored; one hopes as the season continues this talented cast will find the depth to which their director seems to be unable to guide them.

The Deep Blue Sea is being performed by Sydney Theatre Company at the Roslyn Packer Theatre until 7 March 2020. Performance attended: February 8.