I had booked the tickets for Separate Tables some time ago and I wasn't going to let a sore throat put me off so yesterday I tootled over to Salisbury to see a producton of this classic by Terence Rattigan, directed by Gareth Machin who is, as it happens, the Artistic Director of the Salisbury Playhouse. It was superb! My admiration for Rattigan achieved the impossible by rising a notch or three higher!
The experience of watching these two plays which are loosely linked is somewhat similar to stepping into a Tardis and going back 60 years. It was another time, another place, another England but I just about remembered it. It was a time of stiff, English upper-lips in which swirling emotions are only glimpsed until, suddenly, under pressure, they burst forth, only to be quickly reigned back under cover. You sense the total, consuming anguish involved but Rattigan never gives you time to wallow in it in the sort of sentimental wish-wash that seems to be de rigor in contemporary plays and films.
Both plays are set in the sort of genteel but slightly run-down hotel that was common in English seaside towns in the '50s. In the second play we meet 'Major' Pollock, a former 'public schoolboy' and an ex-soldier who has, according to his owm legend served with the best regiments in all the hotspots of WWII. Soon his story begins to crumble as it transpires that he was a working-class lad who managed, just, to gain a commission in the Royal Army Service Corps. Worse than that, he is hauled before the local magistrates for improper behavior on the pier at Bournemouth. Interestingly, Rattigan, who was homosexual, made the offense one of importuning women in his early drafts. Only later, as Britain gradually moved into the modern world did he change the plot to his original idea and make the crime one of importuning men.
At that point, everyone in the hotel, including 'Major' Pollock, is, so to speak, tested. Pollock's first intention is to flee the scene as fast as possible to avoid the shame and embarrassment. Similarly, most of his fellow guests are disgusted and keen to have him removed immediately. However, the hotel owner, a spirited lady with a hard core of commonsense makes it quite clear that she will not be asking 'Major' Pollock to leave! Gradually, given that shock, some of the other guests think again. The sight of 'Major' Pollock, perhaps now undertaking the bravest thing he has ever done, by entering the dining-room and sitting expressionlessly at his usual table, is enough to convince the majority of guests to forgive and forget.
I was particularly moved by this play because there is an aquaintance of mine - I don't know him well enough to presume to call him a friend - whom I like very much. He is facing charges of 'kiddie-fiddling' which date back decades. In fact, he has just been found 'not guilty' of the first charge. If other charges stand up and he goes down then I would simply shrug and mutter something about 'if you do the crime, you must do the time'. However, it would not change my mind that he is, in most other respects, a very intelligent and pleasant companion.
So I suppose that what Rattigan's play tells us is that our re-actions to other people's misfortunes tests us as much as it does them.