The Deep Blue Sea is a play by Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...

. Premiering in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 on 6 March 1952, it was praised by critics and audiences who saw it as evidence that Rattigan's view of life was growing deeper and more complex. It also won praise for actress Peggy Ashcroft

Peggy Ashcroft

Dame Peggy Ashcroft, DBE was an English actress.-Early years:Born as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft in Croydon, Ashcroft attended the Woodford School, Croydon and the Central School of Speech and Drama...

, who co-starred with Kenneth More

Kenneth More

Kenneth Gilbert More CBE was a highly successful English film actor during the post-World War II era and starred in many feature films, often in the role of an archetypal carefree and happy-go-lucky middle-class gentleman.-Early life:Kenneth More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the...

. Its Broadway premiere on 5 November 1953, starring Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Sullavan

Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...

, was not nearly so well-received, and ran for only 132 performances. Later revivals have starred Penelope Wilton

Penelope Wilton

Penelope Alice Wilton, OBE is an English actress.-Life and career:Penelope Alice Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, to a former actress mother and a businessman father. She is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant...

, Isabel Dean

Isabel Dean

Isabel Dean was an English film and television actress.Born as Isabel Hodgkinson on 29 May 1918 in Aldridge, Staffordshire. She studied painting at the Birmingham Art School and from 1937 joined the Cheltenham Repertory Company as a scenic artist...

, Penelope Keith

Penelope Keith

Penelope Anne Constance Keith, CBE, DL is an English actress.Having started her television career in the 1950s, Penelope Keith became a household name in the United Kingdom in the 1970s when she played Margo Leadbetter in the sitcom The Good Life...

, Blythe Danner

Blythe Danner

Blythe Katherine Danner is an American actress. She is the mother of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.-Early life:...

, Harriet Walter

Harriet Walter

Dame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...

, and Greta Scacchi

Greta Scacchi

Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

. 2011 saw two major British revivals to mark Rattigan's centenary, one at the West Yorkshire Playhouse

West Yorkshire Playhouse

The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England is a theatre which opened in March 1990 as part of the regeneration of the Quarry Hill area of the city...

 with Maxine Peake

Maxine Peake

Maxine Peake is an English stage, film and television actress known for playing Veronica in Channel 4's Manchester-based drama series Shameless, Twinkle in Victoria Wood's sitcom Dinnerladies, and, most recently, barrister Martha Costello in BBC legal drama Silk.-Early life:Peake is the second of...

 as Hester and the other at the Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....

 with Amanda Root

Amanda Root

Amanda Root is an English stage and screen actor and a former voice actor for children's programmes.Root known for her starring role in the 1995 BBC film adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and the British TV comedy All About Me, as Miranda, alongside Richard Lumsden in 2004 and when she was a...

 as Hester alongside Anthony Calf

Anthony Calf

Anthony Calf is a British actor, born in Hammersmith, London, England. He studied acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art . He has recurring roles in the television medical drama Holby City, as Michael Beauchamp, and New Tricks as Strickland...

 and John Hopkins

John Hopkins (actor)

John Hopkins is an English actor, known for playing Sgt. Dan Scott on Midsomer Murders.-Career:Hopkins trained at RADA. He read English at the University of Leeds from 1993-1996 and whilst studying joined the Leeds University Union Theatre Group student society, and performed in a number of plays...

.

In creating the play, Rattigan was inspired by the suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 of a young (male) actor with whom he had some time previously had a relationship. This has encouraged some commentators to speculate that the play is secretly about gay men. This is not true — while the play is undoubtedly animated by Rattigan's lifelong homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

, and his experience of hidden "antisocial" passion, he still has written a very strong and vital part for a woman. Peggy Ashcroft

Peggy Ashcroft

Dame Peggy Ashcroft, DBE was an English actress.-Early years:Born as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft in Croydon, Ashcroft attended the Woodford School, Croydon and the Central School of Speech and Drama...

 claimed to hate the part: "I feel I'm walking around the stage naked". Her comment serves to indicate how emotionally revealing, how unabashed, and unrepressed this play is.

Plot summary

The Deep Blue Sea begins with the discovery by her neighbours of Hester Collyer who has tried and failed to commit suicide. Some time before, she left her husband, a respectable High Court Judge, for a semi-alcoholic former R.A.F. pilot. The relationship was physical and passionate but his ardour has cooled, leaving her emotionally stranded and desperate. The aftershocks of her attempted suicide unravel even the remnants of this relationship, but by the end she is brought to a hard decision to live, partly through the intercession of another resident of the tenement house, Mr. Miller, an ex-doctor, struck off for what seems to have been a homosexual offence. These two outcasts, socially ostracised for their 'excessive' loves, find a curious and moving kinship.

Adaptations

The play has twice been adapted into film. A 1955 version, The Deep Blue Sea, directed by Anatole Litvak

Anatole Litvak

Anatole Litvak was a Ukrainian-born filmmaker who wrote, directed, and produced films in a various countries and languages...

, starred Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh

Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...

 and Kenneth More

Kenneth More

Kenneth Gilbert More CBE was a highly successful English film actor during the post-World War II era and starred in many feature films, often in the role of an archetypal carefree and happy-go-lucky middle-class gentleman.-Early life:Kenneth More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the...

. In 2011 a second adaptation, The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea (2011 film)

The Deep Blue Sea is an upcoming British drama film directed by Terence Davies and starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale. It is an adaptation of the 1952 Terence Rattigan play The Deep Blue Sea about the wife of a Judge who engages in an affair with an RAF pilot...

, was made, directed by Terence Davies and starring Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz

Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

 and Tom Hiddleston

Tom Hiddleston

Thomas William "Tom" Hiddleston is an English actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Loki in the 2011 Marvel Studios film Thor.-Early life and education:...

. The film is a Camberwell/Fly Film Production and funded by the UK Film Council

UK Film Council

The UK Film Council was set up in 2000 by the Labour Government as a non-departmental public body to develop and promote the film industry in the UK. It was constituted as a private company limited by guarantee governed by a board of 15 directors and was funded through sources including the...

 and Film4

Film4

Film4 is a free digital television channel available in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, owned and operated by Channel 4, that screens films.-Programming:...

.