Gina McKee as Mrs Shankland
Although Terence Rattigan’s plays appear light and gentle on the surface, an emotional charge comes through the depth of his characters and the well crafted narrative.
This play was apparently written in 1945, although the date is in dispute by some; an amended version of the original was produced in London in 1954.
Due to British censorship at the time, the homosexual elements of the play – with the Major ‘cruising’ and importuning men on the Esplanade – were subsumed into him pestering women in a local cinema.
Rattigan’s original version is now playing at Chichester Festival Theatre. Philip Franks is the director and Stephanie Cole leads the cast with Ian Glen, Gina McKee, Deborah Findley and Josephine Tewson in key roles.
Two very different newspapers portray the politics and culture of the period in which Separate Tables is set. They are New Outlook, which John Malcolm writes for, and the local paper, West Hampshire Weekly News. The latter comes into its own in the second half of the programme as a method of exposing the Major.
In the original production of Separate Tables (St James’s Theatre, London, 22 September 1954), Margaret Leighton played Mrs Shankland in the first act and Miss Railton-Bell in the second. Phyllis Neilson-Terry played her formidable mother.
Stephanie Cole and Josephine Tewson
In the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Separate Tables, Stephanie Cole gleams as the steely Mrs Railton-Bell whilst Deborah Findlay as Miss Cooper provides a lynchpin for both acts; she brings both compassion and humanity to Rattigan’s subversive repartee.
Iain Glen plays ‘red journalist’, Mr Malcolm with an endearingly louché air in the first act. Then he welds himself into a double-breasted jacket and plays the secretive homosexual, Major Pollock, with a well-judged combination of bravado and self-effacing reflection.
As Anne Shankland, Gina McKee brings an air of glamour and tragedy with her in the first act and transforms back into a chrysalis as the unfortunate and almost as tragic Sibyl Railton-Bell in the second.
All the action takes place at the Beauregard Hotel, near Bournemouth, with references ‘off’ to The Esplanade* and Major Pollock’s misdemeanours.
The two youngest members of the Beauregards’ entourage are Jean (Holly Goss) and Charles (Geoff Breton), students from Oxford.
They have irreverent nicknames for the older guests: Old Dream Girl (Miss Meacham), Minnie Mouse (Lady Matheson), The Bournemouth Belle (Mrs Railton-Bell), Mr Chips (Mr Fowler) and Karl Marx (John Malcolm).
Jean takes Charles’ book from him and tells him he’ll be old before his time. He quips, “My God. To be old before one’s time. What a fate. I wonder if all old people are as miserable as these.”
Jean disagrees with his prognosis and gives snippy observations on the guests. “Look at old Dream Girl. She’s as happy as a sand-girl communing with her spirits and waiting for the racing results. The Bournemouth Belle’s quite happy, too, queening it around here in her silver fox, and with her daughter to look after her.”
She adds, “Minnie Mouse is a bit grey and depressed, I admit. But she’s got her music and Mr Chips has got his ex-pupils, even if he doesn’t see any of them. “She adds, that Miss Cooper “is as gay as a bee pinning up notices in the bathroom and generally being managerial.”
Iain Glen as John Malcolm
Despite only seeing her for a minute, she nails Miss Shankland in her pretty dress, gay manner and bright smile as someone who has been through hell. Finally, she is silenced with a long kiss from Charles.
The other guests eclipse their kisses as they arrive in the lounge and Mrs Railton-Bell lets her displeasure be known. She then remonstrates with Lady Matheson, who is less inclined to savage the young, and a pixillated John lurches through the French windows.
He is still shocked at finding his former wife in the Beauregard but, on finding the elderly dowagers in the lounge, lurches off into the storm again.
A former model, during her (first) marriage to John, Anne’s petty tyranny had irritated him so profoundly that he had been jailed on a count of attempted manslaughter; eight years later, his journalistic career becalmed, he had become cynical and prone to take comfort where he could. In warm-hearted Miss Cooper’s arms, for one.
After the two elderly women depart, John reappears; and so does Miss Cooper followed closely by Anne. A droll cycle of swinging doors follows, bringing a surprise twist to the plot…
It is worth saying a little more about Aunt Edna**, who became Rattigan’s best known character. The social certainty that Stephanie Cole exudes as Mrs Railton-Bell is probably in that style. Like Aunt Edna, Mrs Railton-Bell knows what she likes; and she knows even better what she doesn’t like. Moreover, she makes no bones about saying so.
Iain Glen as Major Pollock
It is not until the last scene in the second act that her authority is pre-empted – first by gesture and small, incoherent kindnesses towards the downcast Major; and then by her daughter, who finally says ‘no’ to the iron-clad paragon of social propriety and makes a choice of her own.
The author
Terence Mervyn Rattigan was born in 1911 in London and knighted in 1971 for his services to the theatre. This brought him back into favour after being eclipsed by the brash writing of ‘angry young men’ during the ‘Swinging London’ years, from which he fled to Bermuda.
Regarded by many as one of the 20th century’s finest playwrights, his works include French Without Tears, After the Dance, Flare Path, The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, The Deep Blue Sea, Ross and In Praise of Love.
Many of Terence Rattigan’s plays look at the hidden aspects of life through the concealment of emotion or character. Frank Rattigan, Terence’s father, was a British diplomat and a womaniser whose career foundered on his unmitigated social life and the shame of this probably affected his son, emotionally.
As a young Harrow student, he was open about his newly-found homosexuality but later he went to great lengths to hide it. Socially, it was not acceptable until laws were passed in 1967 allowing consenting adults to make this choice and censorship in theatre was rife until 1968.
*The Esplanade was precisely from whence my companion and I had come after lunch in a former hotel on the seafront of another small town.
A sun-warmed Adonis had leaned through our window during the remnants of lunch, stating his intention of repairing the window; instead, he joined in the conversation and his references to the sea led to my guest departing for a long swim with Adonis following in her wake, abandoning his work.
In this light, the overhead projection of sea scenes during Separate Tables made us feel that we had bit parts in the play.
**Perhaps Barry Humphries’ Edna Everage is a parody of Rattigan’s Aunt Edna.
Separate Tables
Chichester Festival Theatre until 3 October 2009
By Terence Rattigan
Director Philip Franks
Photos Manuel Harlan
