Plunging into hidden depths

Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea is located firmly in an era when passion is never allowed out in polite society to rattle the tea cups, and sex is strictly a matter of closed curtains and closets. Like Noel Coward's Still Life - which became the film Brief Encounter - it uses an adulterous heterosexual affair to convey the pressures homosexuals faced in a society straitjacketed by marital morals, as well as presenting an intriguing response to the suicide of Rattigan's former lover, Kenneth Morgan.

Harriet Walter tackles the role of Hester Collyer - first evoked by Peggy Ashcroft, and subsequently played by such acclaimed performers as Penelope Wilton. As pale and angular as if she had been carved from alabaster, there is no sense that Walter is lurking in the shadow of any stage legend, and from the moment that her character regains consciousness after trying to gas herself, she sends waves of dignified pain and despair right through the theatre.

Despite being provoked by Morgan's suicide, The Deep Blue Sea makes profound observations on the shifting relationships between men and women at the time. It illustrates that no matter how naked two individuals have been with each other physically, if their notions of love are different, they will never achieve that nakedness emotionally: and in Walter's portrayal of Collyer, it becomes clear that it is her slow evolution as an unconventional woman that leaves her at irreconcilable odds with both her husband and her lover.

Thea Sharrock's nuanced production boasts a fine, ambiguous performance from Neil Stacy as Hester's pompous but besotted ex-husband, yet fails to produce a sexually powerful enough presence in her lover Freddie Page (Robert Portal). There is a sense, too, that Rachel Blues's impressive two-storey design, which lowers on to the stage like a trap for Hester, is more satisfying intellectually than emotionally - and its self-consciousness detracts from the drama's potency.

Walter's anguish, ultimately, is the evening's pinnacle. Her sophisticated rawness conveys the true hell of subtle social damnation.

The Deep Blue Sea