Cause Celebre review, The Old Vic

Rattled by Rattigan 

I didn't see Hamlet till I was thirty. I saw it with my then husband. Neither of us knew the story. We were so enraptured - it was the Kenneth Branagh version in a theatre off Charing Cross Road - that we were almost shouting at each other with excitement in the interval. We became the talking point at the bar - the other punters could not believe two educated, adult, humans living in Shakespeare's home country did not know what happened next. I felt a bit like that tonight at the Old Vic revival of Terence Rattigan's classic, Cause Célèbre. My only previous brush with Rattigan was The Deep Blue Sea. I saw the production starring Greta Scacchi and for much of the proceedings had to fight the urge to jump on stage and slap her.  On that basis, I'd decided to give Cause Célèbre a miss, but people kept talking about it so I snuck in at the back and found myself totally caught up in the story of alleged husband killer Alma Rattenbury, 39, and her 17-year-old lover, George Wood.

Rattigan's dialogue is crisp with tension and the dynamics are beautifully drawn out in Thea Sharrock's production, which feels very still and understated, yet ripples with drama. The lightest exchanges are packed with intense meaning, not just in the Rattenbury home but also in the life of Edith Davenport (Niamh Cusack in top form), the controlling, wronged, wife - fictional - who will head the jury at the Rattenbury trial. Each woman represents an extreme - one pious, the other promiscuous; and each represents a conundrum - the pious one's husband absconds, and the promiscuous one keeps both husband and lover. Yet they are the same, because their actions ultimately destroy those they love most.

Emotionally, Anne-Marie Duff is the star of the show. She presents the highly complex Alma with such intelligence you feel you know her from the inside out. Visually, Bruno Poet's lighting, is top dollar. The use of spots to both push characters into the shadows and pull them out in stark relief is mesmerising, like looking into a painting at different times of day and seeing something new depending on the angle of the sun.

Conclusion: This isn't life-changing theatre, but it's classic theatre at its best and another jewel to add to Rattigan's on-stage centenary celebrations. The cast is strong and Anne-Marie Duff is spectacular.  Those who know the story will not be surprised I left in tears.

References

The Old Vic

Terence Rattigan Centenary Calendar

Susannah Clapp, Review, The Observer