The context, moral climate and euphemistic phrases put this Rattigan classic firmly in the 1950s. Yet the emotional turmoil it portrays is timeless.
Rattigan's meticulous, wordy style is also dated, but who cares?
The performances elicited by director Edward Hall are peerless.
Greta Scacchi portrays Hester Collyer, a clergyman's daughter, and judge's wife who has left her safe, conventional background to live with Freddie Page (Dugald Bruce-Lockhart), a Battle of Britain pilot unable to settle into civilian life.
Freddie is also unable to contend with the power of Hester's love for him, or return it, which is the cause of her despair.
As the play opens, Hester is rescued by neighbours from a suicide attempt - illogically an illegal act in the fifties.
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Scacchi and Bruce-Lockhart create exactly the right chemistry to express the inequality and hopelessness of their relationship.
Simon Williams also delivers a delicately compassionate performance as Sir William Collyer, Hester's estranged husband.
The Deep Blue Sea, Terence Ratigan, Theatre Royal Bath
Apart from the main protagonists there is a rich collection of characters who fill the dramatic canvas. There is Mr Miller (Tim McCullan), a doctor who has served a jail term for some unspecified crime, who gives Hester a lesson in survival; Mrs Elton (Jacqueline Tong) the landlady, kindly, all-knowing; Philip and Ann Welch (Geoff Breton and Rebecca O'Mara) young neighbours who discover Hester unconscious and become involved and Jackie Jackson (Jack Tarlton), Freddie's golfing friend.
What is remarkable is that each one of them, however minor, is three dimensional, and makes you care about them.
Rattigan demonstrates a deep and intuitive understanding of the human condition, which is what gives this play its everlasting appeal.
The set is a wonderfully slightly seedy bed-sit. There seemed to be a little unscripted bother with door fastenings, which will no doubt be fixed during the run, which lasts at Bath until Saturday.
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