In this late-career play from 1973 Terence Rattigan makes a case for the reserve and repression that had rendered his earlier work unfashionable, his theatrical reputation having been trampled by the boorish, noisy Angry Young Men of the 1950s. In Praise of Love is a portrait of a marriage in which literary critic Sebastian (Dominic Rowan) and his Estonian wife Lydia (Claire Price) hide their deeper feelings from each other in the face of terminal illness.
It’s a typically well-crafted work with a core of real warmth, though studded with the cliches of the age. Three of the four characters suck down almost a bottle of spirits each as a pre-dinner sharpener and there is a lot of hectoring talk about politics - Sebastian is a champagne Marxist. The story is loosely based on the marriage of actors Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall, and those who remember Harrison will hear echoes of his peremptory impatience in Sebastian’s lines. Director Amelia Sears finds her way unerringly to the heart of the piece through all the layers of tricksy comedy and artifice.
