Summer 1954: Table Number 7 / The Browning Version
Chichester Festival Theatre
Tuesday 21 January – Saturday 25 January 2025
Written by Terence Rattigan
Director: James Dacre
The pairing of these two plays was yet another inspiring choice for the wonderful Chichester Festival Theatre to produce. The settings were deceptively simple, making excellent use of its semi-circular thrust stage, with just one scene and one act in each play, yet delivering two slow burning stories, each revealing secrets and lies, both subsequently turning events on their heads. The denouements are at the same time unexpected, and propitious.
Terence Rattigan was a leading playwright in the ‘40s and early ‘50s, during those years of enormous postwar change, reflected in many of his works, and later sadly disregarded in favour of those much vaunted ‘kitchen sink’ modern dramas of the late ‘50s and ‘60s. Society was changing, along with it the manners, mores and attitudes of the people comprising it, together with the burgeoning anger and rebelliousness openly vented by the new generation.
In our current climate of an increasing number of musical theatre productions, it is a refreshing change to experience Rattigan’s mastery at creating structured dramas firmly set in the post war era when for a time, middle class gentility coupled with suppressed emotions can be seen as an explosive mix. Table Number 7 is in fact the second of two plays set months apart, forming the renowned Separate Tables. Together with The Browning Version – and of course The Winslow Boy – these are arguably Rattigan’s best plays, and remain those which are more often still performed on stage and radio. This production, the first two, performed in tandem, is such a potent pick, and although the settings are entirely different, the theme running through both is of the – some might say typically British – shocking repression of adult feelings, the misogyny and homophobia so redolent of the times.
Table Number 7 is set in a Bournemouth boarding house dining room in a time when it was not unusual for those who could afford it to live indefinitely, forming their own enclosed insular bubble (think Fawlty Towers, complete with a resident ‘Major’ – but there the similarity ends). The ‘Major’ here is played by Nathaniel Parker – he of Inspector Lynley fame, and I’m ashamed to say that I have not been aware of much of what he has done since. And that’s a long list of stage and TV performances. His protagonist roles in both plays are some of the most sensitive and compelling performances I have seen. Two extremely demanding roles, both delivered with such subtlety and perceptiveness, the first as a man hiding his sexuality, living a lie and showing us a poignant vulnerability. The second as a gentle, downtrodden classicist master, hiding his deeply sensitive nature, whilst in silent denial about the collapse of his marriage.
There are few superlatives I can use to describe the sublime Siân Phillips, here of course delivering yet another consummate performance playing Mrs Railton-Bell, a controlling self-righteous and narrow minded woman, whose raison d’être is to interfere in other people’s business, and bully her long suffering daughter Sybil (a performance beautifully captured by Alexandra Dowling).
I should say that when the plays begin, the revolving stage immediately reminds us that this is most definitely a set piece, with almost all of the characters visible, and the theme of the plays gradually unravel without much coming and going. I loved Richenda Carey as the ‘square peg’ no nonsense long term resident, with her surprisingly modern outlook and brisk intolerance of people like Mrs Railton-Bell, whisking around delivering her opinions with a delicious brusqueness. Lolita Chakrabarti, along with Nathaniel Parker, and several other members of the cast, plays a pivotal role in both plays, the first as the capable hotel manager Miss Cooper, who proves to possess a large capacity for kindness, and delivering sound advice.
Gradually, shocking truths emerge, centred around the Major, who has been discovered ‘importuning’ on several occasions, a newspaper report also revealing that his background is fake, as is his self-titled status. This revelation is consumed with relish by the odious Mrs Railton-Bell, which subsequently opens a large can of worms, which turn out to be both surprising and satisfying. Interestingly, at the time, the subject of homosexuality was firmly banned at theatres, and the Major was originally written as an ‘harasser of women’, which was deemed to be somewhat more acceptable. Thankfully times have changed. Mostly.
At the same time, some 70 years ago, The Browning Version, set not in a boarding house, but in a Midlands boarding school, contains very different characters, a different type of repression and a different set of manners. However, deception and lies are once again the backdrop to these superb productions. Nathaniel Parker plays the about-to-retire master, (Andrew Crocker-Harris) oft maligned and cruelly caricatured by the boys, overlooked by the headmaster, and with a cuckolding wife, (Lolita Chakrabarti) a wonderful portrayal of a dominant ‘scarlet woman’, flouncing around in scarlet dress and shoes. Once more, Parker gives us gentleness and poignancy in spades, never overplaying the role, hiding an underlying sadness delivered with such credence. As the play progresses, a simple action of one of the boys, John Taplow (sensitively played by Bertie Hawes) giving Crocker-Harris a gift proves to be the catalyst for the looming implosion.
The world the characters of both plays inhabits is changing irrevocably, a microcosm of ‘little England’. Rattigan’s strength was to reflect the paradoxes of the human condition, and Olivier award winning director James Dacre demonstrates his prowess in conveying those paradoxes with real conviction. Although it is now quite shocking to be reminded of – a mere 70 years ago – the appalling requirement to suppress inner feelings and maintain a ‘stiff upper lip’, these plays are also about the courage of owning your own characteristics and making momentous decisions, ending on notes of optimism and solidarity. And each one in only an hour. Just perfect.
2 hours 20minutes including interval
Touring
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Reviewer: Gill Ranson