After the Dance by Terence Rattigan

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.