by Terence Rattigan
seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 11 November 2015
Terrence Rattigan's reputation, skewered by the so-called 'Angry Young Men' in the 1950s, has risen again in the last couple of decades with a series of impressive revivals of his more weighty plays. 'French Without Tears', his first major success from 1936, is a farce, but as is often the case with Rattigan, there are serious undertones which point to a real, if unacknowledged, fragility in many of the characters.
This production, directed by Paul Miller, features a young cast, (two professional debuts and several recent graduates) with David Whitworth playing the only senior role, M. Maingot. Managing a farce in a small acting space with the audience on four sides and the front row on the stage floor level is quite an accomplishment, and the actors managed this with enormous vitality and skill. While at times the public schoolboy accents may have seemed a trifle overdone in the small space, the overall effect was completely convincing - another of the secrets of a successful production: if the cast is too knowing or the speaking too exaggerated the effect falls flat.
