After the Dance, at the National August 14, 2010
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackSometimes, theatre hurts. Sometimes, a well-made drawing room drama full of elegant people and witty lines comes up from behind and attacks, but it does it so beautifully that you’re grateful. After the Dance, Terrance Rattigan’s tale of 1920s socialites growing older and desperately trying to stay bright young things in the face of the Depression and the approaching war, is such a play.
The Scott-Fowlers have been happily, if rather distantly, married for 12 years, and are the mainstay of their Mayfair set. They have a long-term houseguest, John and a secretary, Peter, with whose fiance Helen David Scott-Fowler falls in love, and a set of stereotypical 30s B-listers – a drug addicted aviatrix, a wealthy socialite with an eastend toyboy, the former lover who’s become ‘serious’ and runs a window washing business in Manchester. Everything is extremely well lubricated (“Everybodies a bore unless you drink”) and they dance around each other almost never saying what they mean.
Nancy Carroll is superb as the gay hostess Joan Scott-Fowler, intent on gossip and frippery, drinking her way through life, refusing to be ‘boring’. There’s something terribly fragile about it all, and when she finally breaks, even with the stilted emphasis on being ‘in love’, the agony is painfully real.
But it is the questions posed by the central character, David Scott-Fowler, that really resound. What do you do when you realise your life has been meaningless? When you don’t like who you are, but know that to change would be impossible? When you’re smart enough to see your faults, but not strong enough to change? Played by a far more serious Benedict Cumberbatch than we’ve had in Sherlock, he takes us through the painful reality of a destructive mid-life crisis step by self-absorbed step. Cumberbatch is wonderful, with a voice that could be standing right beside you even at the back of the Lyttleton, a large theatre. I think I’d be happy listening to that man read a phone book.
When this play was first performed, in 1939, it ran to sellout audiences which suddenly disappeared when war broke out, and was rarely performed again. I wish I’d caught it earlier in its run, as it would reward seeing again, but sadly, it finished on Wednesday. It is a classic.
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