Trevor Nunn’s “Flare Path”

Hey everyone,

So as I’ve mentioned before, I see about two shows a week on average for my class “Interrelationships” at the Ithaca College London Center.  They have ranged from huge scale shows such as Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Shakespeare Company, to small scale shows such as Fatherland at The Gate Theater.  There have been good shows, and bad shows, fantastic performances, and performances which are laughable.  I have been shocked, surprised, angered, upset, moved to tears, and laughed until my sides split open.  Within these performances, I can say that I have seen some of the best individual performances of my life, including Haydn Gwynne as Susan and David Wilson Barnes as Max in Becky Shaw,  Briony McRoberts and Amy Neilson Smith in Once Bitten, Mark Gatliss as Bernard in Season’s Greetings, and Benedict Cumberbatch as The Creature in Frankenstein.  I have been terrified by Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein, laughed uproariously at An Ideal Husband at the Vaudeville Theater, and been moved to tears at Arcola Theater’s Anna Karenina.  I haven’t seen a show yet which fully connected with me on a deeper level.  Tonight, however, Trevor Nunn did just that with Terrence Rattigan’s Flare Path at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Flare Path is set in 1941, in the lounge of the Falcon Hotel in Lincolnshire.  It revolves around a local RAF base which is running bombing raids against the germans.  At the Falcon are gathered members of the RAF and their wives, as well as an actor looking for his love.  I could give you the entire rundown of the plot, but Terrence Rattigan is a much better writer than I will ever be, and therefore you should read his play, or better yet see it at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.  I will, however, tell you about the brilliant actors working on this production.  We’ll start with the main star attraction, Sienna Miller.  Ms. Miller played the role of Patricia Warren, an actress, married to a bomber pilot named Flight Lieutenant Graham, affectionately called Teddy (played by Harry Hadden-Paton).  Ms. Miller’s performance was quite good, she put together a strong character, she played her scenes well, and she created a great character arc.  As happens often with me seeing celebrities on stage, I get surprised by how good the supporting cast is, and therefore I lose a little interest in the star power of the show.  This is not Ms. Miller’s fault, it is simply what happens to me when I see a show.  The aforementioned Hadden-Paton was a great contrast to Miller’s quieter, more cultured role.  He was a wonderful ball of energy, powerful on stage, and a delight to watch.  The character’s demons come flooding out throughout the show, and the heights at which his character lived invoked empathy like I have rarely felt when he spirals out of control towards rock bottom.

The catalyst for the show (at least it seems at the beginning) is the arrival of famous actor Peter Kyle (played by James Purefoy, of Rome fame but more famous to me for Resident Evil alongside Milla Jovovich).  Purefoy’s performance was very different than anything I’ve seen him in before, and actually I did not recognize him from Resident Evil until well after the show had finished.  I had trouble connecting with his character as he looked a lot like Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps and I kept wanting to laugh at moments that were not funny in the slightest.  These were the two starpower names I had heard of, however there were other famous english actors in the cast whose performances were show-stealing.  The first is Clive Wood.  Wood is an english actor that I have not heard of, but his portrayal of Squadron Leader Swanson was a perfect mix of comedy and seriousness that his character helped keep the show moving along.  Wood’s character seemed at first only there to lighten the mood, but as he spreads a blanket over a chair and informs Patricia that he “likes to wait up to welcome the men home” was a really subtle, yet wonderful insight into a deep, thoughtful, and caring character.  It was not Wood, though, who stole the show for me; nor was it Mark Dexter as the hilarious Polish Count Skriczevinsky (or Johnny) who has almost no grasp of the English language, and yet has the most uplifting, and forward attitude towards these bombing runs (amidst the most harrowing past of any of the characters.  While Dexter’s character brought so much joy to this piece, it was his wife, the Countess Skriczevinsky or Doris, as played by Sheridan Smith that truly stole the show.

Smith’s performance was the most subtle, nuanced, balanced, and committed performance that I have seen since I have arrived in London, and easily in the list of best performances I have ever seen.  The play and the production sets her character up to be a bit of a floozy, a trophy wife who seems to keep happy because she knows no other way.  It doesn’t take long for that notion to change, as her intimate knowledge of the air force slang, and different types of bomber jets begins to fortell a different character entirely.  Before long the audience realizes that she is happy because she is strong, and because she knows that in being happy, the people around her can sleep easier at night.  She is the support beam for the other characters in the show, and even when her life reaches rock bottom, she sets an example that all people can hope to live by.  Midway through Act 2 we are brought to the heart-wrenching scene between Peter Kyle and Doris where Kyle translates the letter the Count left his wife should he not return from a mission.  As the count is not well versed in English, and the Countess cannot speak Polish, he writes it in French to help bridge the language barrier.  Kyle is the only person in the vicinity who knows French, and therefore he translates it for her.  Watching Smith’s character receive the letter her husband left her caused my heart to reach out to all wives of soldiers; to the people who stay strong for those away, but who live every day in the fear of losing that which they love most.  Smith’s performance is something that will sit with me for a while, and I can’t thank her enough for what I saw tonight in Flare Path.

In the words of one of my closest friends, Mark Bedell, “to make a short story, long” if you live in London, and you have a chance, see Trevor Nunn’s production of Flare Path.  I’m not sure how much longer it runs at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, but I hope it stays for a while.  It’s not every day that a production is as moving as it is entertaining, often the pursuit of one loses the other, and often the pursuit of both leaves the show without either.  This production gets it perfectly, now I know why Trevor Nunn name lives in theatre lore in the place it does.  Yes, this is very nearly a perfect show, all its flaws are made up for tenfold, and it leaves the audience with a smile and a tear, something I find is very hard for shows to do.

Dr. Kidd told us about how Terrence Rattigan’s have not been very successful in the USA.  I think that’s a damn shame, because if Flare Path is any proof, than his work has some real substance which the American audiences are missing out on.