Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan, Chichester Festival Theatre.
THERE is a moment, albeit fleeting, when you sense you could be watching an episode of the television sitcom Keeping Up Appearances.
Josephine Tewson, who plays the gentle woman bullied by neighbour Hyacinth Bucket in the BBC classic, occupies very similar emotional territory as Lady Matheson in Rattigan's Separate Tables at Chichester Festival Theatre.
And as the play moves into the second act, the redoubtable Stephanie Cole as Mrs Railton-Bell metamorphoses herself into something akin to Patricia Routledge's extraordinary Hyacinth.
The similarities should not be entirely surprising.
For Separate Tables, on one level, is all about the British class system and its disintegration after the second world war.
It portrays the seismic shifts that the war created as one set of morals and standards are ripped asunder and those of that previous generation seek to come to terms with a new, yet still-emerging order.
But, of course, it is more than that too. It is a love story of sorts - or rather two, for the two acts, set in the same Bournemouth hotel with a largely unchanged set of characters, explores two very different tragedies of the human heart.
The first half tells of a couple - played so superbly well by Gina McKee and Iain Glan - caught in that eternal trap of 'can't live together, can't live apart.'
The second half, in which the lead roles are fulfilled by the same two actors, is on the surface a much lighter, more humorous diversion. But, in fact, in contains the darker of the two emotional explorations - and perhaps says much about Rattigan's own struggle with his sexuality.
Rattigan, of course, is an extraordinary writer - technically brilliant and controlled yet capable of laying bare the most complex character creations. His own work has found itself in and out of favour for the past half a century but is, at last, being recognised for the genius it undoubtedly was.
This is a stunning final production for Chichester Festival Theatre's summer season with a cast that meets the brief to perfection. Not to be missed.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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