The Deep Blue Sea, National Theatre

Whilst I’m tending towards agreeing with the ‘good but not great’, I think that actually serves this play to a fault. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but this is not Medea, in which the histrionics are allowed to be so overplayed they’re represented through dance, and nor is it even A Doll’s House, with a plot with the mechanics of a Swiss watch and a crescendo to an iconic ending like no other. It’s a very, very withheld piece, about people who can’t express emotions. What makes this production more moving is how underdone everything is, and how Cracknell completely avoids even the potential of histrionics, making this about as quiet as it can be. I think something lingers from this production, and that comes from it being so subtle, so simple.

Carrie Cracknell has a very open-minded, even-handed approach to her drama (not always – it would have made Blurred Lines boring, and Birdland’s Andrew Scott-centricity gave that its energy – but when it comes to domestic settings particularly). What made A Doll’s House so stunning was that, however triumphant Hattie Morahan was, Cracknell’s treatment of Torvald and Krogstad was kindly, and for brief moments they became heroes of their own minor dramas with Nora, never the victim, almost a villain in their worlds; whilst we ultimately sided completely with Nora, that was despite the faults these prisms made us see in her, and that only made for richer, richer, ever richer drama – if I had to pick a best show ever, I think I’d still plump for that. Her Medea was far kinder on Jason than the play needed to be. Hell, even her Macbeth was strangely non-partisan, though that was a duffer. And here, the things that made it shine were the three dimensions every character had. Tom Burke does a wonderful self-analysis; he begins with caddish confidence and ends with caddish confidence, but at every stage where he’s allowed to be himself he lets us in on this as a façade. When he utters the awful shilling line, it sends chills through its cruelty, but also its possible faux-cruelty: that he’s saying that less because he means it and more because he thinks his ‘character’ of a cad would mean it, and the fact that he would hurt her so again for a façade... Where this egalitarian view came into its own was with Nick Fletcher (the wonderful Krogstadt from earlier), who absolutely stole the show. It looks like I’m not alone in thinking this, and if anyone from here is up for awards I hope it’s him. There’s a simple plain-speaking to him, yet a mournful tiredness, a resilience. It’s so supportive it’s tearjearking. Between the highfalutin pilot phoniness of Burke, and the slightly too-underdone support of Peter Sullivan who I did think didn’t make an impression, Fletcher injects real, sincere, human heart into this, able to articulate to her what McCrory clearly doesn’t allow herself to feel. He’s all the emotions of this piece. Marion Bailey was good in a role much too small for her – not least, when I noticed it was her, I remembered she was so good in Blurred Lines, then I remembered more about that show, then I had this bloody tune going through my head very inappropriately throughout the second half.

Helen McCrory has infinitely less to do than in Medea, and that’s why this is so powerful. Like Burke, she performs to conformity, until she’s allowed to be herself, though even then conformity is her normality; it's an exercise in breaking an unbreakable norm. She plays uncertainty. There’s a central self-doubt, in her occasional voice-cracks, her occasional shakiness, her Teflon approach to any questions about herself, all to reveal that, underneath her calm exterior there’s a desperately sad person, and underneath that there’s an absence where she’s been trying to conform for too long and the artist within, the person Hester used to be, is struggling to be heard. It’s judged rather beautifully, actually, how much of Hester is forced and how much is just because she’s not used to being ‘Hester’ anymore. As she becomes less Hester Collyer, and less Hester Page, her growing realisation that she doesn’t know who Hester alone is anymore is heartbreakingly held back, made more moving by Fletcher’s insistence on bringing out her intrinsic humanity. Because it’s less showy than some other performances (not least her own Medea) it won’t win awards, and arguably it’s less good too, but it’s a very moving portrayal of emptiness and societal conformity and loneliness which comes through clearly.

Unlike other Cracknell shows, this is not one which peaks and peaks and peaks until the tension at the end is airtight, but unlike other Cracknell shows the script she works with demands a subtlety she provides in spades. The ending, after all, is ultimately a boring act – boiling an egg – yet it takes a great director to make something so intrinsically boring so affectingly moving. Because she paints every character in a very human light, and because she demands all emotions be hidden behind the layers of Kenneth Moore-esque acting the 50s require, this Rattigan is a profoundly human, empathetic piece. I didn’t love it (not least, like Plough and Stars, the beautiful set was overblown in this too-big space), but I far more than admired this – its subtle unpicking of its characters’ restraint made for something truly heartbreaking, whilst if its central performance doesn’t set the stage on fire, that’s because it lights a much smaller spark that burns long after the drama is done.

P.S. Do any of you subscribe to the NT Podcasts, and have you heard the Helen McCrory one yet? It’s a bit underwhelming, a little too much of Libby Purves describing the show to Helen McCrory, but some interesting insights about working with Carrie Cracknell. Mostly, though, you can never over-estimate how facetious my mind can get: “Because I worked with Carrie, on Medea...” McCrory starts. “What did she say?” think I, “Kenneth Williams as Creon, Sid James as Jason, Hattie Jacques in the lead – it’s Carry On Medea!”.