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About
the Playwright
TERENCE
RATTIGAN was one of the most successful English playwrights in
history – his work applauded by critics and audiences, his
wardrobe, cars and parties catalogued in the popular press.
From
the light comedy “French Without Tears” in 1936 to
the poignant double bill “Separate Tables” 20 years
later, he captivated everyone with a string of gold-plated hits:
“Where the Sun Shines,” “Love in Idleness,”
“The Winslow Boy,” “The Browning Version,”
“The Deep Blue Sea.” For nearly five straight years
in the 1940’s, three adjacent theatres in London’s
West End were occupied by Rattigan successes.
His
plays were gentle, sympathetic, often brilliant studies of middle-class
men and women in emotional distress - decent people caught up
in intense relationships (triangles, father-son conflicts) in
which emo­tions and passions were decisively sublimated.
Rattigan’s themes were intensely personal ones - “the
illogicality of love, the conflict between heavenly and earthly
love, the pain of loss of promise, the defeat of greatness by
human foible.”
But
these and other motifs remained beneath the surface of his work,
to be apprehended through skill­fully crafted story and carefully
observed character. “From Aeschylus to Tennessee Williams,”
Rattigan rashly wrote in 1950, “the only theatre that has
ever mattered is the theatre of character and narrative.”
Like
many of his characters, Rattigan “lived a life of disguise
and concealment,” presenting himself to the world as urbane
and assured while privately suffering a pervasive fear of failure,
a feeling that his early success was a fluke.
In
recent years, however, the West End has seen superb revivals of Rattigan’s “The
Deep Blue Sea,” “Separate Tables;” and the excellent
“The Winslow Boy” was directed as a film in 1999 by
David Mamet.
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