More Than A Treat

Ana Grabova visits the Mercury Theatre to see Terence Rattigan’s play, Less Than Kind This little known play, written in 1944 by Terence Rattigan, has had brilliant reviews since it first premiered last year and rightly so. Taking place in a contemporary setting, Less Than Kind follows David Osmond as Michael Brown – 17 years old, left-wing, and stubbornly strong in his convictions, and determined to prove his point, as only an adolescent can – as he returns home from his five years of evacuation in Canada. Since then, his mother Olivia – played with wit and charm by Sarah Crowe – has fallen in love with Tory minister Sir John Fletcher (James Wilby). To her son’s bewilderment and much against his Labour scruples, Olivia embraces her new Savoy-dining, sherry-drinking, dinner-party-throwing lifestyle with gusto. Michael reacts to the new father figure with Oedipal apprehension and dons the cloak of an injured Hamlet with zeal. [caption id="attachment_1577" align="aligncenter" width="1024" caption="Caroline Head, David Osmond and Sara Crowe"][/caption] A comedy of manners, Less Than Kind features similar themes to Rattigan’s other plays, and is equivalently distinctly English in its commentary of respectability and characters deciding, and therefore doing ‘what is right.’ Rattigan was hugely prolific as a playwright and incredibly popular – by the 1960s he was the highest paid screenwriter in the world. The emergence of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ scene was unsurprisingly not to his taste, and he retreated to Bermuda to get away from it all, where he died in 1977. [caption id="attachment_1576" align="aligncenter" width="1024" caption="David Osmond and Sara Crowe"][/caption]   The Terence Rattigan Centenary was celebrated last year with a number of revivals including Cause Célèbre, Flare Path (starring Sienna Miller), and the release of a new screen version of The Deep Blue Sea, starring Rachel Weisz. These examples just prove to show that Rattigan (once England’s most popular playwright) and his plays – now offering a nostalgic, yet witty look at a more understated and traditional time – can still pull in quite a crowd. Less Than Kind is on at the Mercury Theatre until Saturday 24th March. To book your tickets, visit the website or call 01206 573948. [caption id="attachment_1575" align="aligncenter" width="2717" caption="James Wilby (Sir John Fletcher) and Sara Crowe (Olivia Brown)."][/caption]