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 Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 15 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs Tim McMullan (Prospero), Phoebe Pryce (Miranda), Dharmesh Patel (Ferdinand), Pippa Nixon (Ariel) Fisayo Akinade (Caliban), Trevor Fox (Stephano) and Dominic Rowan (Trinculo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

A play which starts on a boat engulfed by a terrifying storm, and continues entirely with scenes on an island, might seem a tall order for an intimate candle-lit space with a highly decorated  wooden screen at the back of the stage and no sense of the natural world about it. However, the storm was brilliantly staged in semi-darkness, with crew and passengers careering across the stage in unison as if the whole edifice were tilting with the waves. The only questionable gambits were to have a large stylised picture of a storm displayed, with Prospero in front of it with his staff, before the action began, and to have Ariel swinging on a lantern above during the storm itself. This weakened the important revelation in the second scene that the storm, so realistically presented, is in fact only a concoction of Prospero's art.

Measure for Measure

by William Shakespeare

seen at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on 28 June 2015

This production is directed by Dominic Dromgoole and features Mariah Gale as Isabella, Kurt Egyiawan as Angelo, Dominic Rowan as the Duke, Joel MacCormack as Claudio, Dean Nolan as Elbow and Brendan O'Hea as Lucio. It is presented in 16th century dress to underline the conflict between Puritans and the more bawdy elements of society.

There is plenty of raucous business to keep a good-humoured audience happy; as the musicians are warming up, two houses are wheeled into the groundling space, and bawds and their pimps start crying for trade. When a couple enters either house, it starts rocking most suggestively. Later, when Angelo decrees that suburban houses of ill-repute are to be demolished, these are collapsed and wheeled off.

Ah, Wilderness!

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at the Young Vic on 223 May 2015

O'Neill's only comedy, written in 1933, is directed by Natalie Abrahami and stars George Mackay as Richard Miller, Janie Dee as his mother Essie, Martin Marquez as his father Nat, Susannah Wise as his aunt Lily, Dominic Rowan as Sid Davis and David Annen as an unscripted O'Neill figure presiding over the action who also takes a couple of minor parts. The set design is by Dick Bird.

The costumes forego the ostensible setting of the play in 1906, preferring simpler and indeterminate lines from the mid 20th-century, and the set design ignores the painstaking descriptions provided by O'Neill of various locations in and around the Miller's house. Some of these are read out by David Annen, but often against considerable hubbub from the characters, so that they become a background noise - a neat transference from the visual background a set would normally provide. Instead, there is a raised area at the back with openings onto a sky, and on one side an exit to stairs leading up (presumably to bedrooms and a bathroom); and on the other side stairs leading down (presumably out of the house). The various levels visible to the audience are covered in great drifts of sand, with steps only partially visible. Characters usually negotiate the steps quite successfully, unless in a passion of emotion or a fug of inebriation when they tend to trip or slide in the sand alarmingly. It's a brilliant device for puncturing the histrionics of teenage self-absorption (in Richard's case) or the potentially sorry spectacle of Sid's (and to a lesser extent Nat's) drunkenness in the Fourth of July celebrations.

But there are levels of seriousness beneath the pratfalls, beautifully exposed by Essie's inability to name things that disturb her - whether it be Richard's reading (Wilde, Beaudelaire, the Rubaiyat) or the continuing problem of alcohol amongst the menfolk. And though Richard's outbursts are essentially adolescent tantrums born out of frustrated disgust with social mores and intoxication with racy ideas from literature, there is no escaping the knowledge that these can easily grow into monstrous adult egotism. The ever-present O'Neill figure, often wearily mimicking Richard's nervy and immature gestures and even mouthing his lines, shows us the connection. The 'comedy' lies in the fact that the family is basically harmonious instead of dysfunctional, and the teenager's idealism is looked at fondly rather than cynically.

The cast is excellent. George Mackay brilliantly conveys the restlessness and emotional volatility of a youngster at odds with his world, his great spouts of verbal pyrotechnics matched by physical awkwardness - the twitchings of what now would be classified as ADHD. Janie Dee shows us a mother bemused by this gifted but problematic child, someone with a firm hand and a solid idea of how a household should function (despite a weakness in controlling a wayward Irish maidservant) - the sort of dependable mother figure completely missing from O'Neill's own childhood. Her prudishness is not risible - it is touching. Martin Marquez shows Nat to be a decent man by his own lights, and someone Richard ultimately respects and loves underneath the fireworks; there is a tender rapport between them at the end of the play which is brief but deeply moving. The supporting cast - Richard's siblings, some neighbours and a seedy bartender and callgirl - are well played (the latter pair could so easily have been mere caricatures), while the quiet desperation of the subplot in which Lily Miller consistently refuses to marry Sid Davis provides a poignant counterpoint to the main story.