The torch song Stormy Weather sobs between scenes in this revival of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 drama. Desire has shaken the heroine’s world like a tempest: keeps raining all the time. We’re in pre-gentrified west London, where renegade judge’s wife Hester (Tamsin Greig) has left married respectability to live with a younger man, Freddie Page (Oliver Chris), big on golf, short on prospects.
Peter McKintosh designs a room of gloom: peeling wallpaper, faded rugs, grey light sighing through the curtains. Even the landscape on the wall shows Weymouth Pier under washed-out skies. People smoke nervy cigs or gulp at corner shop claret. Quiet despair lurks in the silences.
