Random Thoughts

There’s a new production of Rattigan’s splendid play ‘Separate Tables’ which I first saw in the presence of Queen Soraya and her husband the Sha of Persia. In the fifities they were the most glamorous couple and very popular over here. ‘Queen So Radiant’ one newspaper dubbed her. From where I was sitting they were both in my eye line and it’s a testament to Rattigan that my eyes were glued to the stage.

The play consists of two one act plays set in a fusty hotel in Bournemouth and separated by about eighteen months in time. The first ’Table by the Window’ is about the destructive, passionate relationship between a disgraced politician and his ex wife – an ageing model. The second ‘Table by the Window’ is a moving account of the gentle relationship between a repressed, misfit spinster and a retired army officer.

Apparently in the new production the second play is a version which was never performed in Rattigan’s lifetime because of his fear of being exposed as a homosexual. In the original version the major was convicted of molesting women in a local cinema. According to Charles Spencer in the new version:

‘”Major Pollock” has been bound over for soliciting men on the esplanade, an idea partly inspired by the notorious arrest of John Gielgud in a public lavatory.’

Spencer thinks this works better but I remember Sibyl’s (the spinster) shock and horror when she read about the molesting of women in the local rag and it was wholly convincing. Soon after Gielgud’s arrest I passed him in the street as I walked to my agent’s office. He was wearing a trilby and with his head down looked a broken man. Those days were very different and it could have ended his career. Happily he survived and went on to be acknowledged as one of our greatest actors.

In the fifties the two main parts in each play were acted by Eric Portman and Margaret Leighton – wildly different characters and realised perfectly by both actors. Margaret Leighton was congratulated on her make-up after changing from the ex model to the spinster – she was told she looked so plain and she confessed she wasn’t wearing any. In the film version the acting didn't come anywhere near the stage play IMO.

A few years later I directed the play in the theatre club but used different leads for each play. I had fun casting the eccentric old dears who lived in the hotel with our own old dears. It worked very well except for the night they had a bracing glass of sherry before going on stage and then proceeded to address everybody by the wrong names, I had kittens but the audience didn’t appear to notice and the old dears learned an important lesson. Afterwards fine – before never.