Theatre history tells us that the work of Terence Rattigan, feted in its mid-century heyday, became old hat by the late 1950s, when John Osborne and the Royal Court crowd burst bad-temperedly onto the British stage and made Rattigan’s milieu of buttoned-down bourgeoisie seem quaintly irrelevant.
Well, fair enough: punk had to happen, too, but just as disco and prog rock have had a resurgence, so Rattigan’s work is now viewed with respect again, and the centenary of his birth has seen several revivals of his plays in the West End, not to mention Terence Davies’ upcoming film adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea.
This box set gives the lie to the notion that Rattigan’s plays dropped out of sight between the 1960s and their recent ‘rediscovery’. The BBC mounted at least two productions of his work per decade - even in the 1990s, when filmed plays were vanishing from the schedules - and each one in this this set bristles with the great and the good of British acting, from Kenneth More, Ralph Richardson and Judi Dench to Imogen Stubbs and a youthful Colin Firth.
The more lightweight pieces - such as French Without Tears, frothy and a bit Wodehousian - is quite enjoyable in its way, but the strongest outings deal with darker stuff: The Browning Version, a concise display of repressed fireworks with a classic Ian Holm performance as a cuckolded classics master; and After the Dance, in which Gemma Jones, as a poised hostess deserted by her husband, unravels in spectacular fashion.
The hallmarks for which Rattigan was often ridiculed - restraint, self-denial, drawing-room manners - are certainly in evidence in these productions, but the undercurrents are what animate the plays: the relentless and ungovernable messiness of human emotions. Nobody showed the fury beneath British politeness so well as Rattigan, and there are moments of cruelty that wouldn’t seem out of place in something by Pinter (not for nothing was Rattigan chosen to write the screenplay for Brighton Rock). This set is a terrific roundup of his major work, and a star-studded tour through four decades of television.
Separate Tables at The Apollo - John Mills and Jill Bennett in a scene from Act 2 of Separate Tables at the Apollo Theatre
Cause Célèbre at Her Majesty’s Theatre - Two extracts from Cause Célèbre, starring Glynis Johns, Neil Daglish, Charles Dore, Philip Bowen and Lee Montague, shot during a theatre preview at Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Film Description
In his centenary year, the genius of playwright Terence Rattigan is being recognised with The Terence Rattigan Collection, an invaluable compendium of his finest work, performed by some outstanding casts, including Sean Connery and Colin Firth, Penelope Wilton and Judi Dench, Ian Holm and Michael Gambon, Eric Porter and Geraldine McEwan.
Contains The Browning Version, Adventure Story, Separate Tables, French Without Tears, The Winslow Boy, After the Dance, Deep Blue Sea, A Touch of Venus and Heart to Heart.
Heart to Heart (Alvin Rakoff, 1962): The first in the 'Largest Theatre in the World' series of plays, Heart to Heart centres around a TV interviewer determined to get a coup on a cabinet minister and stars Kenneth More, Ralph Richardson and Derek Francis. Originally broadcast December 6, 1962.
All On Her Own (A Touch of Venus) (Hal Burton, 1968): Rosemary returns from a party to the empty Hampstead house where she has lived since the death of her husband, but was his overdose of sleeping pills purely accidental? She is going to try to find out. Starring Margaret Leighton and Nora Gordon and originally broadcast on September 25, 1968.
Separate Tables (BBC Play of the Month): Loneliness, desire and repression are explored in the setting of a Bournemouth Hotel. Geraldine McEwan, Eric Porter, Annette Crosbie, Robert Harris, Hazel Hughes, Pauline Jameson, and Cathleen Nesbitt star. Originally broadcast March 15, 1970.
French Without Tears (BBC Play of the Month): The comic, sometimes painful, fallings-out of five young male English students at a residential language cramming establishment in France. Nicola Pagett, Michael Gambon, Anthony Andrews, Barbara Kellermann, Nigel Havers and Tom Woodward star. Originally broadcast May 16, 1976.
The Winslow Boy (BBC Play of the Month) (David Giles, 1977): The term at Osborne Naval College is not yet over. Why, therefore, has cadet Ronnie Winslow returned home? And why, moreover, is he hiding in the garden in the rain? Alan Badel and Eric Porter star. Originally broadcast January 16, 1977.
The Browning Version (Michael A. Simpson, 1985): Andrew Crocker-Harris is an aging classics master at a British public school with only a few days left in his career but who is suddenly forced to confront his own life’s failures. Judi Dench, Michael Kitchen, John Woodvine and Ian Holm star. Originally broadcast December 31, 1985.
After The Dance (Performance) (Stuart Burge, 1992): Set in the Mayfair Flat of a high living, hard drinking writer in 1938, this truthful play attacks the moral vacuity of the ‘bright young things’ unknowingly poised on the brink of war. Anton Rogers, Gemma Jones and Imogen Stubbs star. Originally broadcast December 5, 1992.
The Deep Blue Sea (Performance) (Karel Reisz, 1994): Middle aged Hester Collyer suffers the dramatic personal consequences of a passionate affair with a young, ex-RAF pilot named Freddie Page. Colin Firth, Ian Holm, Carmel McSharry, Wojtek Pszoniak, Stephen Tomkinson, Edward Tudor-Pole and Penelope Wilton star.
Originally broadcast November 12, 1994.
Adventure Story (BBC Sunday Night Theatre) (Karel Reisz, 1961): Rattigan’s dramatic study of Alexander the Great. Sean Connery and Margaretta Scott star. Originally broadcast June 12, 1961.
