I may have mentioned before that the 'Memsahib' and I have walked out of the last two theatrical productions at the interval on the grounds that they were beyond awful and so it was with some trepidation that yesterday we went to the Salisbury Theatre to see Flare Path by Terrence Rattigan. Now this was a dangerous mission because I have a very deep affection for the play, not least because I once directed it, as well as a huge admiration for Rattigan as a playwright.
It describes an afternoon, evening and morning in a small country hotel just on the edge of an RAF bomber command airfield, circa 1942. We meet two of the crew of one particular Wellington bomber, Fl. Lt. Teddy Graham, the skipper, and one of his air gunners, Sgt. Miller. (Rattigan, himself, served as a gunner in Wellingtons.) Both of them are meeting their wives for the first time in a while. Also present is an ex-barmaid, Doris, with the genuine but unlikely title of Countess Skriczevinsky who has married another bomber pilot from the Free Polish Air Force.
Trouble looms with the arrival of Peter Kyle, an Anglo-American film star who is in love with Patricia, the actress wife of young Teddy Graham. She and Kyle had enjoyed a passionate affair during a play production in the States but she had broken it off and returned to Britain. One assumes that on the rebound she married Teddy, a very young, stiff upper-lipped airman who is as far removed from the glamorous Peter Kyle as it is possible to be. But Kyle is no out-and-out rotter. His life and his career are going down and he really does love Patricia passionately and wants to take her back to the States.
That night should have been a quiet one but suddenly an emergency mission is called and the airman have to return to base. The residents watch the planes take off and then all they can do is wait. Early the next morning the planes come in one by one - with the exception of Count Skriczevinsky's. Later it is reported that wreckage has been seen floating in the north sea. Thus we learn that beneath Doris's cheerful chatter and banter she bears a deep love for her Polish husband. Later, when it appears certain that he has gone down with his plane she hands Peter Kyle a farewell letter, written in French because her husband could barely speak English, and asks him to read it to her in English. This is an intensely emotional scene but written with all of Rattigan's careful understatement - which, of course, makes it all the more weepy!
Teddy's plane lands safely and he and Sgt. Miller are reunited with their wives. Patricia is now on a knife-edge of uncertainty. She loves Peter Kyle with a passion but she is married to this immature young man who sounds most of the time like the typical 'wizard prang, old boy' stereotype of a young RAF pilot. However, during a private scene between the two of them, suddenly Teddy breaks down crying and admits to Patricia that far from being a carefree hero he is, in fact, scared to death and terrified of being taken off ops with the dread letters LMF (lack of moral fibre, meaning cowardice) being marked on his record. Now, for the first time one assumes, the truly harsh fist of war smacks into Patricia's somewhat gilded life. She looks down at this truly courageous young man, her husband, sobbing in her lap and realises that she has a duty beyond and above her own personal tribulations. Romantic tosh, I suppose you could call it, or perhaps more accurately, a bit of wartime propaganda, but again, in Rattigan's skilled hands it comes across as a story of a young woman faced with a fork in the road and choosing to take the harder route.
The play ends on a high because at the last moment the exuberant Polish Count bursts in having been hauled from the sea by a fishing boat. This occasions more than a few drinks and sing-song party involving the whole cast with the exception of Peter Kyle who leaves in some despair. In my production of this play, during this final celebration with everyone singing a raucous chorus of a cheerful WWII song, I asked the lady playing Patricia to sit facing out to the audience with an expressionless face. Patricia has chosen duty over love!
Happily the production we saw yesterday, whilst being criticisable (as are all play productions), was well played and produced. It is exceedingly difficult for young actors and directors to quite capture the ambience of those far off times but there are still plenty of us old enough, if not to know of it first hand, at least to remember its immediate aftermath. Alas, it has its 'stat black' in the form of Ms. Shvorne Marks, totally miscast as Sgt. Miller's wife. She redeems the politically correct silliness of the casting director by playing her role excellently well but even so, we are not colour blind and she looks totally out of place. However, I will give the production 7 out of 10. It is touring to Winchester, Ipswich, Coventry, Liverpool, Southend and Guildford and I would urge you to see it if you can.
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