'The Deep Blue Sea' review — Tamsin Greig's woman without hope is quietly devastating

Read our review of The Deep Blue Sea, starring Tamsin Greig, Hadley Fraser, and Nicholas Farrell, now in performances at Theatre Royal Haymarket through 21 June.

Quiet desperation clings to the corners of Lindsay Posner’s accomplished production of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea. The role of Hester, a suicidal woman craving a deeper love from her younger partner, has been performed by an incredible roster of talented actresses since the play’s first outing in 1952, from Helen McCrory to Penelope Wilton, and now Tamsin Greig returns to the part at Theatre Royal Haymarket, following a run at the Ustinov Studio in Bath last year.

Translated to the West End stage, Posner’s intimate, often quiet drawing-room drama is slightly dwarfed by its surroundings, the actors’ voices occasionally lost to those at the back of the stalls or the circle. It remains clear, however, that Posner directs Rattigan’s play with sensitive precision, from the striking first image of Hester lying prone in front of the gas fire, a shaft of light under the front door illuminating the gloomy room, to the loaded silences, which reveal as much as the characters’ tense exchanges.

Greig perfectly balances how much she reveals of Hester’s inner torment. Despite the play opening with her attempted suicide, she tries to maintain some level of composure with her nosey neighbours and gossiping landlady (an excellent comic turn from Selina Cadell). Greig is a master of dry wit, and when Hester is told the gas metre ran out (and therefore scuppered her suicide attempt), she vacantly muses, “Oh that’s what happened” to a chuckling audience. But she is a woman fraying at the seams, and like the peeling wallpaper of Peter McIntosh’s grubby set, she starts to completely unravel when it becomes clear that her lover Freddie (Hadley Fraser) is turning his back on her. The action explodes as words tumble out of Greig’s mouth in a frantic stream of pleas, the first act closing with her desperate shriek.

At times, Hester appears more mother than lover to Freddie, shining his shoes because he always gets the polish on his face, and offering to drop off his bags even when he is leaving her. He is just as lost as Hester, without a vocation and drifting through life in their squalid little flat. Fraser is excellent as the swaggering Freddie, more interested in golfing tournaments than his partner’s birthday, and only able to give a shallow version of love. Like a petulant schoolboy out of his depth, he proclaims, “Oh how I hate getting tangled up in people’s emotions — it’s the one thing I’ve tried to avoid all my life.” Nicholas Farrell, on the other hand, is stoic as Hester’s husband Sir William Collyer. Unable to speak candidly with Freddie, Hester maintains a secretive intimacy with her estranged husband, gossiping about their old friends and sharing small confidences.

Finbar Lynch gives a strong supporting performance as the German doctor-turned-bookkeeper neighbour Miller, who of all the men in the play really appears to see and understand Hester. His direct commentary on events — “She wanted to die I suppose” — cuts through the British politeness with startling deadpan humour.

At the end of the play, Hester screams, “What is there beyond hope?” The misery at the heart of The Deep Blue Sea is sometimes hard to weather, but as the gas fire lights up and flickers in the darkness at the play’s close, it feels as though there is a shred of hope to cling on to.

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Photo credit: Tamsin Greig in The Deep Blue Sea. Inset: Selina Cadell and Greig with Hadley Fraser. (Photos by Manuel Harlan)