What a culture vulture I have been
recently. One Sunday a couple of weeks
back, myself and partner attended After the Dance, a Terence Rattigan play,
purported to be one of his best, but that had a short run mainly because of the
start of the war. Poor Terence Rattigan apparently
took it as an indication that it was no good and didn’t even list the play with
others.
Naturally, the play was dated, but I
expected that. The set was exquisite and
the acting excellent. I felt it captured
what I understand to have been the desperation of the 30- something adults who
missed the drama of the First World War but were disturbed or bored enough to
try to pretend their lives were not empty, but fun, fun, fun! They were the ‘bright young things’ of Evelyn
Waugh’s time, but neither especially young nor bright as one of the characters said.
The main character was a rather shallow man
in his 30s (David) who partied a lot and found things boring if he didn’t. He was writing a historical book and had a
male secretary (Peter), a poor relation, typing it up for him. His wife was a party person too whose favourite phrase seemed to be ‘too boring’.
The story revolved around Peter’s
girlfriend’s desire for David and his for her without concern for who they
might hurt in fulfilling such desires. The young woman (Helen) didn’t appear to
be at all worried about hurting Peter and both she and David assumed that his
wife (Joan) would not be affected by their relationship and the required divorce. Indeed, Joan showed no particular concern for
their imminent divorce, blithely pretending that all was well. The young woman was callously determined to
have the older man and seemed unperturbed by the havoc their relationship would
cause and indeed did.
The character who was most interesting was
the sponging friend (John) who was staying with the couple and spent most of the
time on stage interjecting remarks and generally being very funny. In the end he showed himself to be remarkably
astute in his estimation of all the characters and towards the end of the play advised
David that he should not continue his new relationship with Helen, the young
woman, because he would end up killing her as he had killed his wife. It turned out that he had been in love with Joan
and, presumably, once she was no longer there, had no desire to stay. It was
just before he left that he gave the speech ending with, ‘but I don’t suppose
you will’.
The audience were left hoping that he would
‘do the right thing’, but it wasn’t apparent that he would definitely do so.
I found the play illuminating, but one of
my friends remarked that she couldn’t relate to any of the characters and therefore
found it unsatisfactory. I found Helen’s
desire for David showed the selfishness and callousness of the young and wondered
if I would have behaved as badly had I been in a similar situation, but found
David not entirely shallow and his wife playing a part being almost a play
within a play. I particularly enjoyed the part of John the way that, as an onlooker, he had the most insight into all the characters.
