Into the deep

A new generation of theatregoers is enthralled by Terence Rattigan. And the centenary of the dramatist's birth is being celebrated with starry revivals of his poignant plays, writes Al Senter

The centenary of the birth of Terence Rattigan, one of the 20th century's most accomplished playwrights, is being marked with true theatrical zest this year. The London stage is hosting two Rattigan revivals: Flare Path at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket (with Sienna Miller) and Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic (with Anne-Marie Duff and Niamh Cusack).

Later this summer the Chichester Festival Theatre will stage productions of The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea and invite two contemporary writers to contribute their own perspective on the dramatist. Nicholas Wright has used Rattigan's abortive attempt in the 1970s to write a screenplay on the fraught relationship between the impresario, Diaghilev, and his protégé, Nijinsky, as the basis for Rattigan's Nijinsky. And in response to The Browning Version, David Hare has written South Downs, set in a public school in 1962.

In addition, there is a full programme of Rattigan Sunday events at Chichester, including readings of such lesser-known works as the intriguing Adventure Story, Rattigan's attempt to encompass the life of Alexander the Great. If the theatre shamefully turned its back on Rattigan for several decades from the mid-1950s, then it is atoning for its sins of omission now.

Not that Rattigan was wholly neglected even during the lean years, with frequent West End revivals of his major plays. What rankled with him, though, was that he was denied critical respectability and damned with faint praise by the new theatrical establishment created by the Royal Court revolution of 1956.

At best, he was dismissed as a boulevard "craftsman", a description he detested, a mere commercial crowd-pleaser, a soulless purveyor of well-made plays in an era when the expression "well-made" was seen as a term of abuse. In a theatre that was dedicated to exploring the working-class experience as a prelude to social and cultural change, Rattigan's impeccably bred upper-middle-class characters, holding their emotions in check and hinting at depths but rarely sounding them, seemed like alien creatures from another time.

By the time of Rattigan's death in 1977 there had already been the first faint stirrings of a reassessment. But arguably it was the 1993 London revival of The Deep Blue Sea, with Penelope Wilton as the tragic Hester, which definitively turned the tide in his favour. Among the audience was the young director, Thea Sharrock, who has become Rattigan's most effective champion. Her outstanding production of his "lost" play, After The Dance, at the National Theatre last year waltzed away with no fewer than four Olivier Awards in March and now she has staged Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic.

"Rattigan is a master at the depiction of human relationships, of the detail of how we love and why we do it," says Sharrock. "He writes about what happens when the secrets which we all have, but which we are not necessarily aware of, come to the surface and cause pain. Directing After The Dance and Cause Célèbre has been a bit like working on a new play. That's the upside of Rattigan having been out of fashion. People come to his plays without expectations they might have of a Chekhov or a Shakespeare and so directors don't have to come up with fresh angles to over-familiar pieces."

Even if Rattigan was allergic to the word, Sharrock praises his craftsmanship. "His plays are unbelievably well-crafted," she says. "When he sat down to write, he'd work from a structured plan, which was like a mathematical puzzle, and you can't put together a structure if you don't appreciate how an audience reacts or why it reacts. It was striking that when I was casting After The Dance and talking to actors, they told me that they'd all fallen in love with the play. We all felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to Rattigan-to give him and After The Dance a second lease of life."

The cast of Cause Célèbre is headed by Anne-Marie Duff as the scandalous Alma Rattenbury and by Niamh Cusack as the jurywoman who will judge her. "Rattigan is such a beautiful writer and his female characters are beautifully realised," says Duff. "They are never stereotypical wives or mothers. Because Cause Célèbre was written in the 1970s but set in the 1930s, the characters can talk about sex in a very open way, in a way which Rattigan couldn't have done 40 years earlier.

"Yet often it's the hidden emotions which give Rattigan's work its power. I think that people of my generation are coming to his plays afresh. They don't have the negative associations of their parents' generation. You never feel preached at in a Rattigan play, although he believes in honesty and integrity in human relationships. It's often what's unsaid that matters and his plays feel like tightly stringed instruments."

Cusack adds: "You feel that nothing has been left to chance in Rattigan. You sense that a huge amount of thought has gone into every line. He's writing about human beings and he's writing about what makes us tick. He's also a great story-teller; this play is a real page-turner. Rattigan writes about women in all their complexity but there's also a universality about Rattigan's characters, men as well as women, a common humanity."

Actor/director Philip Franks is the chief architect of the Rattigan season at Chichester and he will stage The Deep Blue Sea and Rattigan's Nijinsky as well as direct readings of First Episode and Heart To Heart. To prepare for the Rattigan marathon, Franks had to read his way through the writer's Collected Works. Was it a voyage of discovery? "Not really. I still think that Rattigan is the English Chekhov," he replies. "I often think of a play as a frozen pond and the further you go towards the centre, the more you risk falling through the ice. But with The Browning Version, the ice never gives way under you. You could analyse every single line of that play and see that the craftsmanship is fantastic, as is the emotional depth."

Rattigan longed for critical approval as well as commercial success, and it is comforting to know his work has been recognised so fully, however belatedly. The theatre that once spurned him is wishing him the happiest of 100th birthdays.