{"id":1319,"date":"2016-07-02T16:34:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T15:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1319"},"modified":"2016-07-02T16:37:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T15:37:14","slug":"propwatch-the-egg-in-the-deep-blue-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2016\/07\/propwatch-the-egg-in-the-deep-blue-sea.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the egg in The Deep Blue Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Helen-McCrory-in-The-Deep-Blue-Sea.-Image-by-Richard-Hubert-Smith\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t look glamorous when eating a fried egg. Or tragic, or sombre, or noble. Can\u2019t be done. As Hester, the anguished heroine of Rattigan\u2019s The Deep Blue Sea<\/em><\/a>, Helen McCrory is all of those things for much of the evening. But not when she\u2019s forking down an egg.<\/p>\n

(If you fear that knowing when McCrory<\/a> eats her egg, or why, may spoil it for you, best come back in a few weeks. Let\u2019s meet up after the NT Live<\/a> screening on 1 September?)<\/p>\n

In The Deep Blue Sea<\/em> (1952), Hester has left her respectable husband for the younger Freddie, an ex-pilot. She\u2019s abandoned Eaton Square for the raffish jostle of a Ladbroke Grove boarding house, the press of neighbours seen through the melancholy blue scrims in Tom Scutt\u2019s set. Love\u2019s equations never work out in Rattigan (take one, carry over), and Carrie Cracknell\u2019s National Theatre staging honours all the characters, suggests that any of their solitary struggles might\u00a0deserve attention. Here it\u2019s Hester, who loves her husband \u2013 but not enough \u2013 and is loved by Freddie. But not enough. Not enough to justify carrying on: the play opens with her attempted suicide.<\/p>\n

Like many West End plays of the 1950s, The Deep Blue Sea<\/em> is pleasingly proppy. Glasses and teacups, shoe brushes and sleeping tablets. There are a couple of significant letters to advance the plot (never underestimate a well-placed plot letter. When Freddie, fishing for cigarettes in Hester\u2019s dressing gown pocket, pulls out her suicide note, the entire audience gasped in dismay). And there are, of course, those cigarettes. You could compile a history of British acting in its cigarette technique. Held in trembling fingers, brandished to suggest bravado, drawing the smoker close to another person\u2019s lighter with a crackle of intimacy, or shared between lovers in smoke-wreathed comfort. Cracknell even makes a neighbour (brilliant Yolanda Kettle) heavily pregnant and has her join the ladies smoking circle while their men are on the town.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much smoking (\u2018I know I brought a packet in with me\u2019), more drinking (\u2018go easy on the scotch, old boy\u2019), but not much eating in the play. No wonder everyone\u2019s so anxious. Rationing was still in force in Britain (it ended in 1954, when a review of Rattigan\u2019s Separate Tables<\/em> records the audience murmuring longingly at the smell of toast in a breakfast scene) \u2013 so Hester\u2019s birthday steak was a significant treat, and the fact that it goes uneaten a genuine misery. Everyone bar McCrory in this production is dressed to look a little plump and bundled up, as if they\u2019ve been munching on stodge to keep going.<\/p>\n

Keep on keeping on<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hester, however, is heedless. McCrory (pictured above by Richard Hubert Smith) cranks up the poshness in her voice, its diamond surfaces but also its broken huskiness. Having seen her at her wan, dishevelled worst as the play opens, we know not to trust her later show of poise. Hers is the familiar agony of being misread by the person before whom she\u2019s laid herself out like a book. It\u2019s not the only pain in the world, but that doesn\u2019t necessarily make it bearable.<\/p>\n

Rattigan might have been tempted to make her pain so unbearable that when Freddie does finally leave her, she would indeed top herself. Yet he doesn\u2019t, and Cracknell finds the perfect image for Hester\u2019s new resolve to live, at least for today. While she packs up Freddie\u2019s clothes, she makes herself a fried egg. Not that delicious steak, or a frivolous cake, or a bare-minimum piece of toast. Instead we see her put a knob of fat in the pan, hear the crack of the egg against its edge. She breaks it in and moves away, but when she hears the sizzle returns to the ring. Not wanting that egg to burn means she\u2019s still with us.<\/p>\n

Regular meals aren\u2019t glamorous, but they measure out the drudging day \u2013 no more, no less. At a time when hope seems a struggle, the crack of shell at the side of the pan, the solitary munch of a well-done egg, carry a palpable weight. The weight of someone who\u2019ll keep on keeping on.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can\u2019t look glamorous when eating a fried egg. Or tragic, or sombre, or noble. Can\u2019t be done. As Hester, the anguished heroine of Rattigan\u2019s The Deep Blue Sea, Helen McCrory is all of those things for much of the evening. But not when she\u2019s forking down an egg. (If you fear that knowing when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,322,321,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-national-theatre","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-theatre","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1323,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions\/1323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}