Writer: Terrence Rattigan
Director: Amelia Sears
Written in 1973, In Praise of Love, one of Terrence Rattigan’s last plays, examines the political climate in a Britain still troubled by the Second World War. It also seems to have been written with a transatlantic audience in mind, as newspaper critic Sebastian Cruttwell finds it necessary to explain the term ‘by-election’ to his American friend Mark, a successful, if popularist, author. But despite its precise ‘70s setting, In Praise of Love is a play interrogating what it means to be British for the British (and the frequent American visitor to London’s West End).
Sebastian was once a great novelist, a new Tolstoy, one critic proclaimed. But those heady accolades belong firmly in the past, and now he writes reviews of books by Shakespearian academics. He declares he’s a Marxist, but his comfortable apartment in Islington suggests his affiliation with the left wing is nothing more than lip service. He drinks too much and is helpless around the house, relying on his wife, Lydia, an Estonian refugee, to fix the heating in his study.
She has just found out that she’s dying from polyarteritis and that she has, at most, two more years to live. However, she tells Sebastian that she’s fine, that all her results have come back negative. In a rather old-fashioned way, she worries about how he would cope without her. Instead of telling him the truth, she pours her heart out to Mark, the rich US author, her husband’s best friend. In another life, he and Lydia would be together.
Apart from Lydia’s deception, nothing much else happens in the first half until her and Sebastian’s son arrives, sporting a Liberal Party rosette, after a day canvassing for the upcoming by-election. As Joey, young and optimistic, Joe Edgar brings some much-needed energy to the play, which at first runs like a traditional drawing room play, the kind of play that Rattigan was much criticised for after the success of the Angry Young Men playwrights and then, later, Joe Orton. But after the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship was abolished in 1968, Rattigan’s work is now uncharacteristically peppered with swear words and direct references to sex. “Poking a skeleton” is the phrase Sebastian uses to describe having sex with his wife.
Sebastian is furious and disappointed that his son is a member of the Liberal Party, which is muddying the simple battle of good (Labour) and evil (Conservative). The Liberals’ attempt to steal the popular policies of the other two parties puts one in mind of Nigel Farage’s Reform, which is now unfathomably more right-wing than the Tory Party, while, at the same time, more left-wing than Starmer’s government.
The political talk is good fun, but at its heart, In Praise of Love is concerned with real emotion rather than abstractions. The second half of the play reveals other perspectives on Lydia and Sebastian’s marriage, a plot inspired by the relationships between actor Rex Harrison and his wife Kay Kendall. Sebastian is not the brute we first thought.
But these new secrets are out of step with an audience weaned on Second and Third Wave Feminism. Fortunately, the acting is superb, especially by Daniel Abelson, who plays the well-mannered Mark, even though he has little to do but be confidant to both husband and wife. Claire Price combines fragility and determination in her portrayal of Lydia, while Dominic Rowan’s Sebastian first appears to be full of bluster and hot air. However, he’s not afraid to hit his wife.
Those who like to discover queer subtexts in Rattigan’s work will enjoy the relationship between Sebastian and Mark, but for most of the play Amelia Sears’ direction is steady, sensibly deciding not to spotlight the period’s sexism when it’s all too clear to see. However, in the play’s bleaker moments, the lights go down and a soundtrack kicks in as if Sears doesn’t trust that the Rattigan’s text is dark enough.
Runs until 5 July 2025
