The Deep Blue Sea (1952) is a play by Terence Rattigan. Premiering in London on 6 March 1952, it was praised by critics and audiences who saw it as evidence that Rattigan's view of life was growing deeper and more complex. It also won praise for actress Peggy Ashcroft, who co-starred with Kenneth More. Its Broadway premiere on 5 November 1953, starring Margaret Sullavan, was not nearly so well-received, and ran for only 132 performances. Later revivals have starred Penelope Wilton, Isabel Dean, Penelope Keith, Blythe Danner, Harriet Walter, and Greta Scacchi. 2011 saw two major British revivals to mark Rattigan's centenary, one at the West Yorkshire Playhouse with Maxine Peake as Hester and the other at the Chichester Festival Theatre with Amanda Root as Hester alongside Anthony Calf and John Hopkins.
In creating the play, Rattigan was inspired by the suicide of a young (male) actor with whom he had some time previously had a relationship. This has encouraged some commentators to speculate that the play is secretly about gay men. This is not true — while the play is undoubtedly animated by Rattigan's lifelong homosexuality, and his experience of hidden "antisocial" passion, he still has written a very strong and vital part for a woman. Peggy Ashcroft claimed to hate the part: "I feel I'm walking around the stage naked". Her comment serves to indicate how emotionally revealing, how unabashed, and unrepressed this play is.
The Deep Blue Sea begins with the discovery by her neighbours of Hester Collyer who has tried and failed to commit suicide. Some time before, she left her husband, a respectable High Court Judge, for a semi-alcoholic former R.A.F. pilot. The relationship was physical and passionate but his ardour has cooled, leaving her emotionally stranded and desperate. The aftershocks of her attempted suicide unravel even the remnants of this relationship, but by the end she is brought to a hard decision to live, partly through the intercession of another resident of the tenement house, Mr. Miller, an ex-doctor, struck off for what seems to have been a homosexual offence. These two outcasts, socially ostracised for their 'excessive' loves, find a curious and moving kinship.
The play has twice been adapted into film. A 1955 version, The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Anatole Litvak, starred Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More. In 2011 a second adaptation, The Deep Blue Sea, was made, directed by Terence Davies and starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. The film is a Camberwell/Fly Film Production and funded by the UK Film Council and Film4.
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