Terence Rattigan, one of the twentieth century's finest playwrights, was born 100 years ago this year.
To mark this occasion the Wilmslow Green Room's first production of 2011 is arguably his most famous drama - The Deep Blue Sea.
The Deep Blue Sea is a moving and engrossing play which confronts class division, social acceptance and seething emotions. Theatre critic, Charles Spencer rated it as "..the greatest and most moving British drama since the Second World War".
Set in the early 1950s, Hester Collyer (Carmel Bird), has run away from her husband, Sir William (Ian Cole), a distinguished judge, and is now living in a dreary flat with her lover, Freddie Page (Richard Frost), a former fighter pilot. Having let the very passionate affair with Hester run its course, Freddie now finds he is unable to match Hester's overwhelming love and passion for him.
Hester finds her situation too much to bear and bungles an attempt at suicide because she feels that "Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting".
It is the intervention of Hester's neighbours, Ann and Philip Welch (Lottie Tyler and Adam Peerbaccus), the housekeeper Mrs Elton (Val Middleton-Egan) and Freddie's friend, Jackie Jackson (Martin Fitzgerald) that reveals further emotional turmoil amongst the residents of her apartment block. Surprisingly, Hester's advisor and confidant turns out to be another social outcast, the disgraced and struck off Dr Miller (Richard Ellis). Sir William, the archetypal dignified, upper-crust Englishman still loves his unfaithful wife and wants her back. Hester is loved by both men but not in the way she wants and having given everything up to follow her heart, she cannot go back to her old life.
Directed by Graham Boswell and assisted by Jan Atkinson, the Wilmslow Green Room's production of The Deep Blue Sea runs from Saturday January 29th to Saturday February 5th. Tickets can be purchased on Saturday mornings at the Green Room Theatre on Chapel Lane between 10.30am and 12 noon or via the ticket hotline 01625 540933.
