While the Sun Shines

by Terrence Rattigan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre on 18 June 2019

Paul Miller directs this sparkling revival of one of Rattigan's most successful and popular plays, written in 1943 and set in London - indeed in the celebrated chambers of the Albany off Piccadilly - during the Second World War. In a great ensemble cast Philip Labey plays the Earl of Harpenden, John Hudson his manservant Horton, Julian Moore-Cook the American Lieutenant Mulvaney, Sabrina Bartlett the Earl's fiancée Landy Elisabeth Randall, Michael Lumsden her father the Duke of Ayr & Stirling, Jordan Mifsúd as the French Lieutenant Colbert and Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Mabel Crum.

The play is a farce, beautifully plotted and relying on the opportunities for social chaos provided by the uncertainties of war - an Earl who is only a naval rating and thus the military subordinate but the social superior of the two Lieutenants; a marriage perhaps over-hastily arranged; a louche woman (self-described as a 'trollop') known both to the Earl and to his prospective father-in-law. There is also a genial send-up of the supposed national characteristics of the Alliance - a reserved, not to say completely diffident, English toff, an enthusiastic but good-hearted American, and an impassioned and proudly Gallic Frenchman.

Everything depends on immaculate timing and the seriousness with which the actors play their parts: Paul Miller has excelled in transferring the logistics of a play which can only have been written with a conventional proscenium stage in mind to the intimate square of the Orange Tree with its audience on all four sides, while the cast convey the often ludicrous quirkiness of their characters with conviction. Sending themselves up would be disastrous; it never happens. 

The result is a wonderful entertainment, in which a heartfelt avowal of love between two confused and rather immature people with their backs to each other can be the successful culmination of all the comings and goings of the play. But it is only one element amidst the mayhem; there is a great running joke that all the important men's issues can be resolved by who should win at a game of craps, while the worldly-wise Mabel Crum foregoes social advantage for financial security while outwitting a former lover with delicious aplomb.

It is utterly refreshing to see such a consummate production.