Rattigan in Chichester - "one of the monumentally great parts"

Nat says: “The thinking was that my lovely agent that I have only just recently joined was saying to me that I should do some Rattigan and he gave me a play to read. I saw obviously that it was very good but I wanted to do something a bit more edgy and that wouldn't be compared to previous versions. And he said ‘Read this’ and gave me Separate Tables and then I read The Browning Version and once I had read The Browning Version, I just thought if there's a chance to play this part, then you've got to take it. It is one of the monumentally great parts.”

In the piece, in the heart of the Midlands, the end of the school term brings to a climax the intrigues, deceptions and lies in the lives of its teachers. The ensuing implosion of classicist Andrew Crocker Harris’s career triggers the collapse of his marriage.

“It breaks down what looks like a rather obvious and formal setting, a boarding school and a master’s home and it all looks quite traditional but underneath all of that you see the agony and the pain and the sorrow of who this man is and you wonder where he is possibly going. And cleverly Rattigan leaves a little question about what happens next. It is a terrific play.”

The first half of the evening is the second part of Separate Tables: “And we are doing a version that has never been done before in this country. I believe it was originally done in Manchester on the radio and unluckily for Rattigan when he had finished the Lord Chamberlain said no. I don't want to give too much away but it was because of its overtly sexual content so he was not allowed to do it here and I think it was done in America.”

In the piece, the atmosphere at The Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, is marked by a blend of repressed emotions and post-war gentility. Each of the staff and guests has their own reason for seeking the solace of quiet anonymity, but trying to hide from the social and cultural change sweeping over the country is proving impossible.

All of which adds up to a very busy evening for Nat who has to switch between deeply contrasting but equally fascinating characters over the interval: “The fascinating thing for me is that I never really know who I am warming up to be when we start the show!”

But the point is that these are characters who directly speak to us now: “In the first play you have the idea of somebody that has to pretend to be somebody else to be accepted and then when it gets exposed, who is going to accept him and what is going to happen? And that just feels so current. It is so relevant still to us now.

“And then in the second piece it is this idea of how you can survive a marriage that is a lie. You've got two different characters, him and his wife that have been entwined together for 20 odd years but they actually hate each other, and immediately you pick up that it's not a happy relationship. You think that they are leading their own lives and that is fine but there are depths... so many depths.”

And that's why we keep returning to Rattigan: “Rattigan thought his life and his career were finished when he went to London and saw Look Back In Anger at the Royal Court. He said my career is over. It was the start of kitchen sink drama rather than Bournemouth hotel drama and it was a very different style of writing but I'm so lucky this last year that I have done Tom Stoppard and now I am doing Rattigan and it really strikes me how Shakespearean-led they both are. There's so many things to think about and so many different ways that you can say the lines.

“And the lovely thing is that I get to work with someone who is 30 years older than me and I also get to work with somebody who is 40 years younger than me!”