In Praise of Love

by Terence Rattigan

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 30 May 2025

Amelia Sears directs Dominic Rowan as Sebastian Cruttwell, Claire Price as Lydia Crutwell, Daniel Abelson as Mark Walters and Joe Edgar as Joey Crutwell in a revival of Rattigan's 1973 play in which British reserve is taken to extraordinary lengths as the married couple Lydia and Sebastian try to protect one another from knowledge which each thinks will devastate the other.

Sebastian Cruttwell, exaggerating his pose as a curmudgeonly leftie theatre critic, appears abominably cavalier with his wife, expecting her to see to his every need and to solve the most trivial domestic problems (such as switching on the heater, or plugging in a desk lamp, when he complains the they do not work). Lydia, therefore, is convinced that he would be unable to function without her, despite the fact that he seems to treat her with casual contempt. Rattigan excels at scenes of domestic disharmony in which more is plainly going on than the surface dialogue admits; here are two people, married for twenty-eight years, who seem on the verge of being at loggerheads in the style of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - but we don 't have to wait till the end of the play to understand what is at stake: Lydia soon confides in her friend Mark what she is doing. The surprise comes later, when Sebastian also risks a confidential conversation with the same friend, who thus has too much information to know what to do for the best.

Unwittingly caught in this tense situation is the young Joey, infuriating his father by working for the Liberal Party, and aspiring to be a dramatist, very aware of his father's disdain but still all-too-easily hurt by it, and even aware of his mother's tendency to manipulate him, but helpless to avoid it. There is much impassioned talk about the importance of honesty even as both parents are concealing feelings and knowledge in the most brazen way.

I am trying to account for the subtleties in this play without giving away the plot details; suffice it to say that Rattigan's skill in dramatising these sorts of situations, pregnant with undercurrents that cannot be resolved in the way current fashion dictates - or even with the tentative glimmer of hope that flickers at the end of Albee's celebrated play - is undiminished, and the cast in this revival rise to the challenge of portraying these flawed well-meaning people with great success. There is a rapprochement between Joey and his father, even though Sebastian still cannot explain to his son why he has missed a crucial chance to see the boy's first television play - love may be praised as much as honesty, but the practice of it remains hard work and is often compromised.

 

The Government Inspector

by Nikolai Gogol

seen at the Chichester Festival Theatre on 17 May 2025

Gregory Doran directs a new version of Gogol's famous play by Phil Porter, with a large ensemble cast (how profligate with actors older playwrights were! - twenty-four named characters and unnamed sundries.)

A marvellous set, designed by Francis O'Connor, gives the impression of a nineteenth-centruy provincial Russian (or Ukrainian) town, with cupolas and steep roofs silhouetted like a child's overgrown box of wooden building blocks, while also representing the cluttered office of the beleaguered mayor. The local worthies are in a sudden panic having heard that a government inspector is about to arrive, probably incognito: their venality might well be exposed. Their mounting unease is brilliantly counterpointed by the extraordinary comings and goings of a local police officer who skids across the floor in paroxysms of enthusiasm.

A wastrel passing through the town is mistaken for the inspector; from being threatened with starvation for not having paid his bills at the inn, Khlestakov is suddenly showered with favour and money, and he is soon in a position to flirt with both the wife and the daughter of the mayor, and he is more than willing to accept, and then to demand, favours from all and sundry.

This farcical indictment of petty corruption and unbridled opportunism is great fun to watch, though its mechanics are occasionally a bit creaky. The local jealousies and snobberies are nicely observed; the classic master/servant relationship is wonderfully elaborated between Khlestakov and the hapless but worldly-wise Osip; the imperious wife and put-upon daughter of the mayor provide a study of domestic tension; and there is a good deal of physical comedy making excellent use of Chichester's thrust stage, including a spectacular pratfall through a skylight into Khlestakov's garret room in the hostelry.

Khlestakiv makes his getaway apparently unscathed, and far richer than he was when he arrived, while the town worthies are about to be confronted by the real inspector ....

Ben and Imo

by Mark Ravenhill

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 8 May 2025

Erica Whyman directs Samuel Barnett as Benjamin Britten and Victoria Yeates as Imogen Holst in a production transferred from the RSC's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon of Mark Ravenhill's new play exploring the beginning of the long working relationship between the composer and his 'musical assistant'.

Imogen Holst, the daughter of the composer Gustav Holst, famously denigrated her own skills as a composer, and spent her life dedicated to the idea that music should be available to all, and that all who wanted to should participate in it. She encouraged music-making among evacuees in the West Country during the Second World War, taught at Dartington Hall for nine years, and was encouraged to go to Aldeburgh in 1952 to assist Benjamin Britten while he composed Gloriana, an opera commissioned by the new Arts Council to be performed at the Coronation Gala on 8 June 1953. Britten had agreed to the commission (out of a sense of duty, it is claimed in this play), but never found composing as easy as it had been when he was a teenager, and he resented the interference of others outside his immediate circle. 

Holst arrived in Aldeburgh with virtually no luggage and rented a room above a shop, intending to stay for less than a year. She spent the rest of her life based there, dying in 1984. She not only assisted Britten in the preparation of the opera, but continued to work with him for more than a decade afterwards (despite strains in their relationship) and was a significant contributor to the success of the annual Aldeburgh Festival until she retired in 1977.

The two personalities, so very different from each other, make for an intense two-handed play. Samuel Barnett captures Britten's curious mixture of arrogance, self-assurance and neediness, while Victoria Yeates portrays Holst's free-spiritedness and verve while hinting at the insecurities and loneliness which they mask. Inevitably, under the pressure of the commission, sparks fly despite her admiration for his genius and his resentful realisation that he needs someone like her to help with his work. In an explosion of anger Britten delivers some staggeringly cruel blows; the devastated Holst nevertheless stays, but with a steely announcement that she will neither forget nor forgive. 

The working relationship which brought Ben and Imo together is given its due without descending into too much technical explanation (it is never made entirely clear what Imo spends all her time doing, though there are hints of how careful she has to be not to tread on Ben's professional toes). In the meantime the personal relationship is revealed to be complex: sometimes workmanlike, sometimes extremely playful, sometimes warm, and yet at times quite abusive. What I found fascinating was that for all Britten's defensive cruelties and childish tantrums, Holst, though battered, kept rising to the occasion due to the force of her own character and her profound belief in the value of what she was doing. The personal cost to her may have been high, but she was determined not to let it crush her.

On a purely contingent level, the performance was remarkable for two unwanted interruptions. Soon after it began someone's phone rang (despite clear requests to ensure that such a thing would not happen), and Victoria Yeates, in her imperious Imo voice, asked for it to be dealt with: quite bizarre to hear a person supposedly in 1952 address such a modern irritation. Then a few minutes later the whole performance was suspended for the best part of ten minutes while a technical problem with the sound (I think) was addressed - although it may have been that the revolve was not working since it only turned when the performance resumed. The professionalism of the two actors in these trying circumstances was exemplary.

The play was originally performed on a thrust stage; here, with the audience on all four sides of the acting space, an adjustment had been made by the designer Sutra Gilmour, whereby Ben's piano was on a revolve in the centre, which periodically turned 90 degrees so that the actors could plausibly face in different directions during the performance. This in turn meant that all the static furniture - a music-score carrel, a standing lamp, a small trolley, a small bookcase and an armchair - had to be moved appropriately by the two actors. It was very well done.