by On 8 May 1956, Terence Rattigan stood outside the Royal Court theater in London after the opening night of a revolutionary new play. This was not one of his own plays but a throwback from the generation ahead: Look Back in Anger by John Osborne. Or, as the veteran playwright bitterly renamed it: See Terence Rattigan’s Unlikely I’m Being. Refinement was out, the Angry Young Man was in, and the author of Separate Tables and The Winslow Boy had fallen into favor.
But that all changed in 1993 – with Karel Reisz’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea, Rattigan’s most daring work. Penelope Wilton played Hester Collyer, who is separated from her husband, a primly patriarchal high court judge. She now lives in sin with her younger lover, ex-RAF pilot Freddie Page. The play begins when Hester’s listless body is discovered by her neighbors. She has tried to gas herself when Freddie failed to return on her birthday. (She would succeed if there were enough coins in the meter.) The rest of the day, and the drama, is spent rowing over the edge of her life. Freddie bowls in without delay; her husband tries to coax her back to the matrimonial home; and the enigmatic ex-doctor, Miller, encourages her to “go on living”.
Peggy Ashcroft said she felt like she had no clothes on when she was playing the part of Hester
Tamsin Greig, who is 57 years old, who is about to play Hester in a new production, saw Reisz’s version when she was starting out as an actress. “I was shaking,” says Greig, eating a salad roll in the church hall during a break from rehearsals. Sitting next to her is Oliver Chris, her 45-year-old co-star from the surreal hospital sitcom Green Wing, who plays Freddie. “It was very attractive,” says Greig. “Penelope gave such a deep performance.”
Previous generations had grappled with Hester, who combines great intelligence with a seductive desire, relating to others with clarity within her own fog of shame. (Each night before going on stage during the 2016 revival, the late Helen McCrory listened to Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good.) Rattigan’s former lover, the actor Kenneth Morgan, which left the playwright who inspired the character. another man, only to gas himself when that new relationship hit the rocks. Rattigan, distraught to learn of Morgan’s death, was already turning it into a drama that same evening. He was heard saying to himself: “The play will open with the body found dead in front of the gas fire.”
The Deep Blue Sea premiered three years later, in March 1952. The original Hester, Peggy Ashcroft, said she could not sympathize with her character. Observer critic Ivor Brown wrote that Hester “needs a good slap or a straight talk with a Marriage Guidance Expert”. Times change. Contemporary critics admired the traces of Racine, and of Greek tragedy, in Wilton’s production. The Guardian’s Michael Billington said Ashcroft made Hester “painfully aware of the humiliating cost of her employment” of Freddie, and called the role “one of the best parts for a woman in the theater of the 20th century “.
Greig, with short silver hair and wearing a powder-blue sweater, weighs the challenges of a 21st-century approach. “Peggy Ashcroft said she felt like she had no clothes on when she got the part. I think we are in a slightly different place now. If we are don’t take our clothes off, literally or psychologically, then people feel a little cheated. It’s about being exposed and still hiding something.”
She and Chris, who is busy trying not to spill his navy blue sweater, are best known for comedy. Greig has starred in some of the funniest comedies of the past 25 years – not just Green Wing but Black Books, Episodes and Friday Night Dinner – and Chris’ credits include the West End and Broadway of One Man, Two Guvnors. They last met on stage in 2017’s gender-fluid Twelfth Night: Greig Malvolia in a witchy black wig, Chris a boisterous, boxing Orsino.
Although you might not know it from Terence Davies’ gritty 2011 film The Deep Blue Sea, which starred Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston, Rattigan’s text is full of wry laughs, with gallows or gas leak humor there. “Yes yes funny,” agrees Greg. “Humor is a coping mechanism. It makes you ask: what’s under that iceberg?”
She mentions a heated exchange in the play about Lyme Regis, which causes Chris to let out a sulky harrumph. “I don’t think I’m going to get it at all laugh about this,” he says. “And if anyone else does, I’m writing them down.”
“If anyone looks like they’re laughing, I’ll tell them, ‘Stop!'” Greig assures him.
“That’s it,” says Chris. “Stop! You don’t know what he has!’”
Greig loves the idea: “It’s tall but it’s fragile.” Then she thinks for a moment. “vulnerable as high?”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” says Chris.
They have a bit of an argument: he teases Greg for making his lunch “like Countess Edward”, and she draws attention to his Trevor Howard-era hair. When they met 20 years ago on Green Wing, things were very different. Although Chris appeared in The Office, he felt “very intimidated by all these funny people”. He turns to Greig: “During our improvisation, you threw the floor with me! I was throwing you duff ball after duff ball.”
“The weird thing for me now,” she says, “is to be passionate – when Ollie and I joke about our other jobs. I’m at the age where you think, ‘Oh, that kind of acting won’t be necessary anymore. I’ll just have to be scary or disciplined.’ But playing Hester is about being vulnerable, as well as being the object of desire. It’s about showing off an underbelly.”
All this tomfoolery leaves one unprepared for their intense approach to Rattigan’s text. Asked to explain its staying power, their focus immediately sharpens. “These are modern ideas that he’s dealing with,” says Greig. “It’s about being kind to yourself, ‘living your best life’ as we say now. Hester asks if criminals can escape their sentence and Miller says, ‘Yes, if the judge is fair – and not blind to hatred of the criminal – as you are to yourself.’ That’s a modern take on self-care.”
“Do you think Hester is the main character and the antagonist?” asks Chris.
“Haha! Yes!” Greig exclaims. “It’s like that psychotherapeutic view of dreams, which says that every character is you.”
“She has to win the battle,” says Chris. “Maybe that’s why Peggy Ashcroft had those questions about being unsympathetic. What she may have discovered is that Hester is at war with herself.”
Greg asks Chris where that leaves his character, Freddie. “It’s complicated,” he says, furrowing an eyebrow. “You are presented, on the surface, as someone who is irresponsible and childish, deep down, unable to function in society or in this relationship. But even with Freddie’s gradual drunkenness, there are points where he makes a good argument. He’s caught, too. He is struggling.”
Freddie’s reaction when he accidentally discovers his lover’s suicide note is to storm off and pass out. “Suicide is part of the drama,” admits Chris. “But think about how it affects the real world. This man has come home to find that the woman he loves has tried to kill herself, arguably because he forgot her birthday. That’s going to send even a decent person spiraling.
“Look, I’m not really into suicide, but when I was a kid, my best friend from infant and junior school – we’ve since broken up – killed himself at 16. What I remember from the funeral is his parents’ anger. His father gave the judgment and he was livid. So there is that influence. The idea that Freddie has finally been approached and he is going to start up all the silt and ashes and embers of everything. Then he grabs whatever is there – and it’s a bottle.”
At one point, Freddie puts a shilling down on the table so that Hester’s next suicide attempt will not fail. Greig argues that even this callous act is more complicated than it seems. “I think it’s about choice,” she says. “It leaves the base. Miller gives her the sleeping tablets. There is a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of claret. They are challenging each other. ‘These are the things you are using – and I challenge you to see that.’ Miller says it at the end: Hester has the power to choose.”
Chris seems grateful for Greig’s advocacy for his character. “I feel defensive against poor Freddie,” he says. “It literally puts that out there: if someone loves you in a certain way, and you can’t return the affection, what are you supposed to do?”
“That’s the human condition,” says Greig. “We all love in a different way. The question is, ‘How do we live with that?'”
• The Deep Blue Sea is at Ustinov Studio, Theater Royal, Bath, until 1 June.
• In the UK and Ireland, you can contact the Samaritans on freephone 116 123, or send an email to jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the United States, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat at 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to reach a crisis counselor. In Australia, the Lifeline crisis support service is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
