The Deep Blue Sea review

The frayed furnishings and peeling wallpaper of Peter McKintosh’s set evoke Hester’s fall in social status. She now lives “in a low neighbourhood” where the sight of her ex-husband’s Rolls-Royce provokes whispers. As the flat fills with visitors – including Felicity Montagu’s gossiping, fretful housekeeper Mrs Elton, and Finbar Lynch’s droll but deeply empathetic struck-off doctor Miller – it feels cramped. Paul Pyant’s lighting sends the greyish brightness of a dull London day beaming into the flat from gaps between the curtains, but is at its most impressive in the climactic scene at the end of act two, lighting Hester from beneath as she screams down the stairwell, begging her lover Freddie not to leave her alone tonight.

Part of the genius of Rattigan’s perfectly plotted play is that it captures the maddening, illogical nature of infatuation. We, the rational outside party, struggle to understand Hester’s decision to leave her comfortable life with her thoughtful husband for a poorer one with a selfish man incapable of returning her feelings. Posner’s production heightens her incomprehensible decision through clever characterisation: the disparity between Nicholas Farrell’s loyal, stately Bill Collyer and Oliver Chris’s brash, sneering ex-RAF pilot Freddie – who at best is a hopeless manchild – is stark. It’s as painful to watch the self-loathing Hester wave away offers of help and love from everyone around her as it is to see her and Bill share the banter of two seemingly compatible souls. In Posner’s staging, it’s all devastatingly performed, with a powerful magnetism.