Two of our finest actors are on stage all this week at Richmond Theatre. Sian Phillips and Nathaniel Parker appear in an evening of two one act plays by Sir Terence Rattigan. Given the title Summer of 1954 to set them in the period the plays were written Table Number Seven and The Browning Version are both superb. It makes for a wonderfully entertaining night out. Maybe a unique event, who can say?
The conventional story has it that the well-made play was blown away by Look Back in Anger in 1956. On the evidence of Summer 1954, this may need reconsideration. Sir Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) may not be as sexy as John Osborne but for my money, he is profound, provocative and progressive. Sure, he’s subtler than Osborne but that’s no bad thing. Rattigan also has a better feel for the nuances of English life than Osborne and a deeper connection to both literary and dramatic traditions.
These two plays are superb depictions of England in the 1950s. As we seem to be being swept along in a wave of nostalgia for those “Golden” days we would do well to revisit those Brideshead days. In Table Number Seven we catch a glimpse of England as it were frozen in time. We are in the Beauregard Hotel in Bournemouth. The Hotel is a micro version of England. An Albion House, if you like. The atmosphere is stuffy, heavy and repressive. It is ruled over by the truly frightful matriarch Mrs Railton-Bell. Sian Phillips gives an unimprovable realisation of her. The tone of her voice alone recaptures that world of upper-class entitlement and superiority. Her snobbery is unashamed. Her daughter Sybil Railton-Bell (Alexandra Dowling, impeccable) suggests that Major Pollock (Nathaniel Parker) is acceptable because he was in the Black Watch she dismisses her with the line: “My dear, one could be in the Horse Guards and still be common.”
What’s compelling about Table Number Seven is that we see in slow motion the unravelling of this spiteful old England and the sprouting of a more tolerant and accepting one. The action centres on Major Pollock a repressed homosexual and his confrontation with Mrs Railton-Bell. As his subterfuge unfolds the residents are forced to take sides. Sybil becomes symbolic. She signifies generational and sexual liberation as she stands up to her tyrannical mother. The changes are quiet and subtle but profound and real just the same. Amidst the seriousness there is wit and humour. This balance between the serious and the humour makes Rattigan a very sympathetic playwright.
Goodbye, Mr Chips is perhaps Rattigan’s most loved play. Clearly school masters occupied a special place in his creative imagination. We can see this in The Browning Version. This is a more complex play than Table Number Seven but just as enthralling. The Browning refers to the Victorian poet Robert Browning who translated The Agamemnon, by Aeschylus written in 458 BC. You see why I mean about Rattigan being stepped in the Traditions of drama. The parallel being drawn is between King Agamemnon and the schoolmaster Andrew Crocker-Harris (Nathaniel Parker). Both fight long battles -the King ten years against the Trojans, the school master 18 years against the lower fifth – both having unfaithful wives and both dying. King Agamemnon literally, Andrew figuratively, as his wife Millie (Lolita Chakrabarti, commanding) tells her lover, “you can’t hurt Andrew. He’s dead”. Obviously, one doesn’t need to know all this to appreciate the play. It works perfectly on the surface level, as it were. Rattigan had both a tragic vision but also a sense of redemption. The tragedy is very visceral in The Browning Version. The schoolmaster as a tragic failure is indubitably, implacably faced. As Andrew ruefully remarks his epitaph will be “the Himmler of the lower fifth.” His thanks for trying to keep order for 18 years. But as he says if even one boy takes away a love of classics his life has not been in vain. Two wonderful one-act plays make for a timely revival of Rattigan’s oeuvre and a much-needed historical appreciation of what the 1950s was really like.
Review by John O’Brien
Summer, 1954. The atmosphere at The Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, is marked by a blend of repressed emotions and post-war gentility. Each of the staff and guests has their own reason for seeking the solace of quiet anonymity, but trying to hide from the social and cultural change sweeping over the country is proving impossible.
Meanwhile, in the heart of the Midlands, the end of the school term brings to a climax the intrigues, deceptions and lies in the lives of its teachers. The ensuing implosion of classicist Andrew Crocker Harris’s career triggers the collapse of his marriage.
Britain is changing. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Directed by Olivier and UK Theatre Award winner James Dacre, an ensemble cast will perform both plays, led by Olivier Award winner Nathaniel Parker and BAFTA winner Dame Siân Phillips. Cast includes: Lolita Chakrabarti, Alexandra Dowling, Angela Jones, Jeremy Neumark Jones, Simon Coates, Richenda Carey, Kishore Walker, Pamela Miles, Fiona Tong, Rosalind Lailey and Bertie Hawes.
Theatre Royal Bath Productions and Living Theatre Productions present
SUMMER 1954
Richmond Theatre
27 January to 1 February 2025
Summer 1954 live at Richmond Theatre from Mon 27 Jan to Sat 1 Feb 202
