The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan
Nick Hern Books
Pp. 90
F3; M8
The play
begins as a young woman, Hester Collyer, has attempted to take her own life, although
the gas went out because there wasn’t enough money in the meter. In this
respect, it almost commences with an element of black comedy. Hester is
discovered by the landlady, Mrs Elton, and the couple from upstairs, Anne and
Philip Welch. Mr Miller also gets involved, a mysterious resident of the
tenement who may or may not be a doctor. It transpires that Hester is in love
with Freddie Page and has left her barrister husband, Sir William Collyer, to
be with him, but Freddie doesn’t feel quite the same as she does and is, in
fact, alarmed by her physical passion. “He walks forward and kisses her.
Instantly she responds, with an intensity of emotion that is almost ugly. After
a moment he pushes her away and smacks her playfully.”
Freddie
was an RAF fighter pilot until an accident curtailed his career, and he has
turned to drink, although he still maintains the lingo and bravado. “Funny
things about gongs, when you think what a lottery they were. They don’t mean a
damn thing in war – except as a line-shoot, but in peacetime they’re quite
useful.” When Jackie reminds Freddie that he was “the tops… as a test pilot”,
he replies, “I was – a year ago. Since then things have changed a bit. (He
points to his glass.) This stuff isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered for
nerve and judgment. Besides I’m too ruddy old. You’re finished in that racket
at twenty-five. I wouldn’t last a week. I want something chairborne – not
airborne. I’ve had flying for life.” His staccato speech is in sharp contrast
to Hester’s stillness, and when he first enters, her simple responses which are
made without her once turning to meet Freddie’s eye, creates a cruelly ironic
effect distancing Freddie from the audience’s sympathy.
The play
takes place in one room, over the course of one day, follows one narrative, and
as noted by Dan Rebellato in the introduction, “almost no violent action occurs
on stage. This unshowy preservation of the Aristotelian unities perhaps subtly
encourages an audience to expect a tragic ending.” Instead, there is a final glimmer
of hope, and many contemporary critics felt cheated. Miller thinks Hester may some
talent in her painting which might become a little flame. “Not a great fire,
which could have illumined the world – oh no – I’m not saying that. But the
world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.” Rebellato
champions the play: “The story of Hester Collyer, trapped in a relationship
with a man incapable of returning her love, and her transition from attempted
suicide to groping, uncertain self-determination is handled with extraordinary
economy, precision and power. The depths of despair and desire that Rattigan
plumbs have made The Deep Blue Sea one of his most popular and moving
pieces.” Other reviewers feel it is a brutally bleak meditation on the cruel
consequences of one skirmish between sexual desire and social repression.
Rattigan
was known for putting character ahead of ideas, and for themes of sexual
longing and humiliation. Hester knows that Freddie loves her as much as he ever
did, which means that he doesn’t. He’s not a bad man, but she is passionate
about him and that is not socially acceptable for women in this era. In this
respect, the play in similar to Look Back in Anger to which it is often
compared, usually unfavourably. When asked what he thought about Osborne’s Look
Back in Anger, Rattigan replied that it should have been retitled, ‘Look
how unlike Terence Rattigan I’m being.’ Hester is a tough character to play
without being mawkish, maudlin or melodramatic. She could also be self-pitying
and dull or hard and matter of fact. It’s a fine balance. Hester explains,
“When you’re between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea
sometimes looks very inviting.”
Freddie
tells his mate, Jackie Jackson, “A clergyman’s daughter, living in Oxford,
marries the first man who asks her and falls in love with the first man who
gives her an eye. (After a slight pause.) Hell, it’s not that I’m not in
love with her too, of course I am. Always have been and always will. But – well
– moderation in all things – that’s always been my motto. (At the table.)
Have another?” Another touch of black humour in that he is immoderate in drink,
while glibly discussing his lover’s broken heart. Freddie thinks only of
himself, while accusing others of being selfish. “Supposing she’d pulled it off
last night, do you realise what everyone would have said? That I’d bust up a
happy marriage, and then driven Hes to suicide. I’d have been looked on as a
ruddy murderer. Did she think of that, I wonder? Who the hell would have
believed what I’ve just told you?” He is the conventional one, while Hester risks
being a social outcast through her honesty. When having a disagreement with her
husband, she says, “There are polite words and impolite words. They all add up
to the same emotion.”
Collyer
tells Hester that he would happily take her back and that he is even more in
love with her than he was “on our wedding day.” He tells her that Freddie is
reprehensible, with which the audience agrees. “This man you say you love is
morally and intellectually a mile your inferior and has absolutely nothing in
common with you whatever; what you’re suffering from is no more than an ordinary
and rather common infatuation; and it’s your plain and simple duty to exert
every effort of will you’re capable of in order to return to sanity at once.” She
despairs that her husband cannot understand how she feels. “In sober truth
neither you nor I nor anyone else can explain what I feel for Freddie. It’s all
far too big and confusing to be tied up in such a neat little parcel and
labelled lust. Lust isn’t the whole of life – and Freddie is, you see, to me.
The whole of life – and of death, too, it seems. Put a label on that, if you
can.” She will not return to Collyer, as she tells him, “I’m simply a prized
possession that has now become more prized for having been stolen.”
Michael
Billington wrote of The Deep Blue Sea, that it is “as timelessly true as
Phèdre in its portrait of the inequality of passion.” Dan Rebellato considers
that “Rattigan has placed Hester between her father the clergyman, her husband
the judge, and her lover, the ex-airman; Hester’s sexuality is policed by a
repressive triad of church, law and the army.” Philip attempts to take charge
of the situation by telling Hester, “Without trying to be preachy or anything,
it is really the spiritual values that count in this life, isn’t it? I
mean the physical side is really awfully unimportant – objectively thinking,
don’t you think?” A lot of the humour is at Philip’s expense, and he is so
uptight and pompous that he doesn’t notice. When he lectures Hester by
recounting his own experience – “I went away for a fortnight all by myself –
and of course I had hell, but gradually things sort of got clearer in my mind,
and when I got back I was out of the wood.” – she replies, “I’m so glad. Where
was it you went?” His answer, Lyme Regis, deflates him and his specious
argument.
Meanwhile,
Miller appears to be the only one who can relate, as he counsels Hester, “To
see yourself as the world sees you may be very brave, but it can also be very
foolish. Why should you accept the world’s view of you as a weak-willed
neurotic – better dead than alive? What right have they to judge? To judge you
they must have the capacity to feel as you feel. And who has? One in a
thousand. You alone know how you have felt. And you alone know how unequal the
battle has always been that your will has had to fight.” This is also a caution
to the audience. Miller is amused that Ann should concern herself about
Hester’s mental state, when she is physically unharmed. “You make that
distinction? Her mind is perfectly sound. There is no trace whatever of any
psychotic symptoms which might justify a certificate of insanity.” When Ann
asks what made her try to kill herself, Miller answers “(after a slight
pause) She wanted to die, I suppose.” Again, this hints at black comedy,
although he suspects she “probably will try again, and try again very soon.”
There has
been considerable criticism levelled at Rattigan (as there is to E.M. Forster
in The Inheritance) that he wasn’t open enough about his sexuality – it was
illegal to be homosexual – and that he writes coded characters, such as Mr
Miller. Many people at the time (and me) thought that the reason Miller couldn’t
practice as a doctor was because he had performed an abortion (also illegal),
but modern interpretation believes it is because he was discovered to be gay. Attempted
suicide was also illegal in the 1950s. Miller insists he is not a doctor
although he has all the credentials, and he mocks Collyer with his
understanding of patient confidentiality. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. It’s much the
same as the English schoolboy’s code, isn’t it? No sneaking.”
Rattigan
had a relationship with a man who tried to end his life through gassing himself
and failed – but this doesn’t mean that he has made Hester a male stand-in and
written in code about homosexuality. It is a lot deeper and more complex than
that, as Rebellato explains, “Homosexuality, then, was explored and experienced
through a series of semi-hidden, semi-open codes of behaviour; the image of the
iceberg, with the greater part of its bulk submerged beneath the surface, was frequently
employed. And this image is, of course, one of the metaphors often used to
describe Rattigan’s own playwriting.” He is criticised for smuggling furtively
homosexual themes into his plays and for lacking the courage to confess to his
sexuality both in his plays and his writing – the devil and the deep blue sea,
indeed.
The fear
and repression in palpable. In his obituary of Rattigan, Michael Billington wrote,
“His whole work is a sustained assault on English middle class values; fear of
emotional commitment, terror in the face of passion, apprehension about sex.” Rebellato
argues, “There are traces of gay experience running through The Deep Blue
Sea. The set itself strongly captures the continual fear of exposure felt
by so many homosexual men and women. The room with a communal stairwell right
outside the door is positioned to encourage a constant awareness of
surveillance, with characters perusing each other’s letters, exchanging gossip,
and overhearing one another’s conversations.”
The letter
Hester writes to Freddie is passed around and becomes a plot device, typical of
the ‘well-made play’. Rebellato feels, “There is a fluidity and subtlety in the
way that Rattigan has the suicide note pass from the mantlepiece to the Welches,
then into the pocket of Hester’s dressing gown, and finally into the hands of
Freddie. Rattigan expertly misdirects us, so that we have forgotten about the
letter, until Freddie’s desire for a cigarette leads him to stumble across it...
The same confidence and theatrical economy marks Rattigan’s use of the shilling
which Freddie cruelly offers Hester, ‘Just in case I’m late for dinner’, and
which lies on the table until Hester picks it up in preparation for her second
suicide attempt. Through these devices… Rattigan not only creates a
satisfyingly taut theatrical unity, but reminds us of the dangerous atmosphere
in which these characters live, in which everything is charged with meaning,
and where objects and actions are constantly scrutinised, judged and battled
over.” If we can stop comparing this to Osborne (as if they were both trying to
write the same play) and appreciate it for its own merit, we must conclude that
this is a very fine play indeed.
