Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea (Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, 12–27 June) features “one of 20th-century theatre’s best parts for a woman”, in the words of Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington: “an upper-middle-class woman who has an unsatisfied physical and emotional passion worthy of a Racine protagonist”.
This boarding-house Phèdre is Hester Collyer, a middle-aged woman who leaves her husband, an eminent judge, to find passion with a much younger man, a dashing ex-pilot — who does not love her.
Created by Peggy Ashcroft, the part of Hester has attracted actresses of the calibre of Vivien Leigh, Honor Blackman, Penelope Wilton, and Harriet Walter. In this production, Jenna Roberts plays Hester.
“It’s a monster role,” says director Tony Knight, former Head of Acting at NIDA. “She hardly ever leaves the stage, and she goes through an emotional rollercoaster.
“Jenna’s fantastic — it’s lovely to work with someone of that intelligence and maturity.”
Rattigan was one of the most popular English playwrights of the mid-20th century, famous for works such as The Winslow Boy (filmed with Jeremy Northam) and The Browning Version. But he was overshadowed by the Angry Young Men — John Osborne and company — and his plays fell into neglect.
“Rattigan has been sitting in the wings, waiting for revivals,” Knight said.
The Deep Blue Sea (1952), which Billington considers “Rattigan’s most perfect play”, has been rediscovered in the past 15 years. National Theatre Live screened a 2016 performance with the late Helen McCrory, while Tamsin Greig played the part of Hester in 2024.
“This is a play for mature people in their forties and fifties,” Knight says. “It’s beautifully written; Rattigan is a master of structure, of form. It deals with very big universal themes, and it offers a very strong feminist statement.”
He writes: “The central dilemma of The Deep Blue Sea is one most of us recognize immediately, though we spend years pretending otherwise: broken heart and broken dreams. What does one do when ‘caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,’ where every available choice seems catastrophic? One may leap toward disaster, retreat toward despair, or remain perfectly still while life collapses around one with admirable politeness.”
In Billington’s view, the work is Rattigan’s “most complete exploration of his obsessive theme: the inequality of passion”. He praises its ability to combine the classical unities (it takes place in one room in one day) with empathy for all his characters, “his profound understanding of the wounded heart”, and its ability to blend “emotional honesty with a powerful microcosm of 50s England”.
Indeed, Chaika artistic director Karen Vickery says the conversations feel “almost like class warfare happening in a living-room. You can feel this society changing and shifting.”
The Deep Blue Sea begins with Hester recovering from an attempt to end her own life. But although “many people think it is a play about suicide, it is not,” Knight says. “It is about a woman discovering her independence and moving on.”
Knight and Vickery describe the play as an erotic triangle between Hester, her husband Collyer, dignified and compassionate, holding out an olive branch, and Freddie Page, floundering in civilian life.
“Hester abandons safety for passion, only to discover that passion largely consists of anxiety in rented rooms,” Knight writes. “Freddie belongs to that dangerous class of men who inspire devotion precisely because they cannot return it properly. Sir William occupies the eternally tragic role of the rejected, civilized man. Audiences feel he ought to prevail simply because he is decent, but drama rarely rewards decency. Passion invariably chooses instability.”
ACT Hub’s traverse stage — the audience sit on the sides of the performing space — makes spectators feel like they are “eavesdropping and witnessing Hester’s private life”, Vickery says.
“That echoes what happens in the play: the neighbours are constantly dropping in; the neighbours can hear everything; there is no real sense of privacy… In a way, the audience become members of the tenement house.”
Indeed, Chaika suggests that Hester’s story might resonate more profoundly with audiences today — particularly women — than in its own time, when, Billington notes, it broke conventional taboos.
“Hester discovers a sense of purpose,” Knight says. “It may be really small; it may be tiny; but she’s just at the beginning of a rebirth or a rediscovery. That’s vitally important for women who are middle-aged.”
And it is, above all, “a good night in the theatre and worth the money”, Knight says.
The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan, directed by Tony Knight, presented by Chaika Theatre. ACT Hub, Causeway Hall, Kingston, 12–27 June. Ticket prices: adults $45; concession $40; under-30s $35; first in best dressed $30 (10 tickets per performance available at this discount). For more information: https://www.acthub.com.au/production/the-deep-blue-sea/
