Rattigan Double-Bill

This really is Terence Rattigan's Renaissance year. Hard upon Neil Bartlett's thrilling revelation of Rattigan's last play, Cause Celebre, comes what amounts to an invaluable, posthumous Rattigan premiere. The playwright's suppressed, gay version of Table Number 7 - second play in his famous double-bill Separate Tables - and unearthed by his biographer Geoffrey Wansell, at last reaches the stage.

This gay version hardly departs from the original, yet converts a conventional West End drama into a forceful attack upon the 1950s witch-hunting and stigmatising of homosexuals. Rattigan originally wanted the phoney "Major" Pollock to be homosexual, guilty of importuning men rather than touching up girls, as in his 1950s version. But theatre censorship, commercial pressure and fear of his mother's reaction deterred him. Now by presenting Table No 7 with Rattigan's delectable farce Harlequinade, where a famous theatrical couple discover a skeleton in their closet, a superior double bill is created.

How much more suitable the Major's "offence" now seems; how luminously Rattigan evokes the sexually intolerant and phobic attitudes of Fifties middle England, as on display in the genteel, long-term residents hotel.

Colin Ellwood's production, with Julie Godfrey's spectacular revolving stage-sets, evokes the period's killjoy greyness. Barbara Jefford's splendid Mrs Railton Bell, brimming with vindictive malice, acts like a hanging judge who longs to don the black cap for Barry Wallman's pathetic Major, while Sheila Reid, Thelma Ruby and Oliver Bradshaw beautifully convey the mixed spirits of old middle England. But Lucy Whybrow's repressed Sybil assumes caricature proportions.

Harlequinade lacks farcical momentum though sparking comic delight, with Diana Hardcastle's elderly Juliet and Thelma Ruby's slightly senile Dame pre-eminent. After some recasting this show would have West End potential.

Box office: 0171-226 1916

Rattigan Double-Bill