Tonight I took the Director and the Dramatic Soprano to see the Terrence Rattigan play ‘The Deep Blue Sea’.  I had actually seen it some weeks ago with The Boyfriend, The Tall Lady and The Producer.  I was not thrilled, but I put it down to the fact that I had been having the week from Hell and was in no mood to see a play about the end of a traumatic love affair. Turns out, I was wrong.  The problem was not that I had been having a bad week, the problem was the leading lady.  Greta Scacchi.

She’s always been a mystery to me. How can such an obviously flawed actress be as successful as she is? What is she famous for exactly? Disrobing in most of her films?  She was the only weak link in what I thought was a fine play (from what I have read, most people agree that Rattigan wrote some remarkable works) but one which I am not going to make any effort to see again.  The play rests on the question ‘is this character going to survive the next 24 hours or will she let herself die’?  With Greta in the lead role, one can easily find oneself thinking ‘who cares, she’s an idiot’.

Still, she is a name (why?) and as one, producers will insist on casting her in star roles hoping for a sold our run.  The reviews have been phenomenal.  The Telegraph reviewer called Greta’s performance: 

…shatteringly fine as the desperate, suicidal Hester, catching the agonising mixture of despair and hope in her doomed affair with the former RAF Spitfire ace Freddie Page.

The Sunday Telegraph called it:

…the finest piece of acting I have seen in a decade.

Perhaps he was watching a different play…which is also called ‘The Deep Blue Sea’…