Love in Idleness

by Terrence Rattigan

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 22 April 2017

Trevor Nunn directs Eve Best as Olivia Brown, Anthony Head as Sir John Fletcher, Edward Bluemel as Olivia's son Michael and Helen George as Sir John's estranged wife Diana in a wonderful revival of Terrance Rattigan's wartime comedy, with sets designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis.

The play opens in a swank apartment with Olivia on the telephone gushingly trying to arrange a dinner party, persuading a series of guests to attend on each other's accounts. Eve Best excels at this fast-paced society manner, the words pouring out persuasively with hardly a breath taken. Yet we are soon aware that the situation is not exactly straightforward. She answers telephone calls a little warily, pretending anonymity until she knows who is calling; and she seems inept at taking in an important message for Sir John Fletcher, a minister in Churchill's War Cabinet. It transpires that Sir John has installed Olivia in the flat; their romantic involvement is clearly passionate but social respectability is denied them as Sir John cannot afford the scandal of divorce while in the Cabinet.

The situation is suddenly complicated by the imminent return of Olivia's son Michael from wartime evacuation to Canada. Olivia, ever living her life in the moment, has failed to explain to Michael about her liaison, which began after her husband's death and (obviously) while Michael was away. Her attitude to awkward problems is brilliantly conveyed by her squirming under John's stern (but ruefully weary) attempt to make her face the responsibility - but also in her being at last caught out in having let everyone assume that Michael is still essentially just a 'little boy'. He is in fact nearly eighteen, but this would add unwanted years to her own age so she has left the matter vague during his absence and her entry to Sir John's glittering social world.

Michael arrives, at first baffled by the opulence of his mother's surroundings, and then appalled when he discovers from the housekeeper what is really happening. He has developed left wing views and is naturally repelled to find one of his capitalist betes noires 'keeping' his mother. Unable to enlist the housekeeper in his moral outrage ('do you think I would stay here if anything was not proper?' she points out with unanswerable propriety tinged with deference) he takes to acting like Hamlet moodily despairing of his mother's falling away.

All this is very entertaining - Rattigan has a perfect ear for the kind of tension involved while seeing both the absurdity and the pain under the surface. Eve Best's Olivia is infuriating in her skittishness, while Anthony Head's Sir John is both bluff and yet cannily aware of his position and the sudden threat posed by Michael's eruption into their lives. But these are two people, not caricatures, and their deep feelings for each other are clearly genuine. Edward Bluemel portrays Michael as a prim but ultimately very vulnerable young man. What is particularly appealing is that the characters are often involved in theatrically farcical situations, yet they also become better known to us as people, and the real strength of their emotions is never in doubt. When Michael introduces Diana Fletcher (a cleverly poised Helen George) to her husband's flat, in another failed attempt to find an ally, there is yet more social comedy as she remains resolutely unimpressed by the revelation and cordially amused by Michael.

Rattigan is famous for his more tortured characters, people who are in an intolerable situations because their personal needs are totally at odds with the stifling social conventions of the times, or because they are trapped in loveless relationships. These possibilities swirl about this piece too; one feels it would not take much for society to turn against Olivia and John if they flaunted themselves too brazenly, and that Olivia in particular would be wrecked by scandal or ostracism - we see the cost to her of choosing to leave the creature comforts and genuine love of John because her child demands it. But Rattigan allows that the determination of a powerful man may overcome not only social obstacles but even youthful fanaticism. Sir John's deviousness may be cynical but it is also effective (and startlingly revealed as a theatrical coup) in producing a happy resolution to his problem. Michael is perhaps barely aware that he has been outsmarted.

The attention to period detail and style is meticulous, and absolutely necessary, as without it the play would look ridiculously implausible. For example, the proposed dinner party does not take place in a fantasy world. It is part of Rattigan's wonderful attention to social mores that Olivia's solution to the catering problem is to dine out at the Savoy in order to save ration coupons. Later, a newsreel screened during a scene change shows a butcher carefully slicing meagre portions of spam; the contrast between the haves and the have-nots is quietly but effectively made.

Amazingly four people behind us left at the interval, two of them complaining that the play was a great disappointment and full of unnecessary over-acting. An extraordinary judgement, considering that the class of people we were watching really did behave and talk in that way in the 1940s, and that the production as a whole managed the balance between poised social comedy and deeply felt personal relationships exceptionally well. While some people can evidently rarely be satisfied, it is gratifying to note that once again the Menier Chocolate Factory has a hit on its hands, with a West End transfer already announced and selling well.