About the Play:

The Deep Blue Sea was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

The Deep Blue Sea is a full-length drama by Terence Rattigan. A married woman leaves her husband for a passionate but ultimately tragic relationship with a young pilot.

Written in the early 1950s when Terence Rattigan was at the height of his powers, The Deep Blue Sea is a powerful account of lives blighted by love — or the lack of it. Hester Collyer's husband is a rich, talented lawyer; her lover, Freddie, an ex-fighter pilot, is neither Hester's moral nor intellectual equal, but Hester loves him with an intensity that few, and especially not Freddie, are capable of matching. They are death to each other. Hester is driven to attempt suicide. Between the devil and the deep blue sea the latter looks very attractive. She is saved by Miller, a disbarred doctor, and through him learns how to transcend both hope and despair. This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

Cast: 3 women and 5 men

What people say:

"Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan." — Michael Billington

About the Playwright:

Sir Terence Rattigan (1911-1977) was a popular English dramatist who wrote some of the most memorable and important plays of the twentieth century. His plays are generally situated within an upper-middle-class background. He was that relative rarity among the ranks of playwrights: a major theatre author who was almost equally successful as a screenwriter, and one of a very few playwrights of his era privileged to adapt his own stage work to the screen on a regular basis.