'While The Sun Shines' at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond

Terence Rattigan's war-time comedy of manners, 'While The Sun Shines' is on at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, cue problems with the District Line while we're trying to get out to Richmond. It always seems to happen when we visit the Orange Tree. I've seen quite a few Rattigan plays in the last decade or so and, while they're very old fashioned and often dated, I quite like them so this was a good opportunity to add another one to my list of his plays I've seen.

It's the tale of Bobby, a young sailor in the Second World War who's managed to get leave so he can marry his fiancé. Remember, of course, that this is Rattigan so Bobby isn't just any old sailor, he's an earl, the Earl of Harpenden to be precise, worth two million pounds and with three country estates.

Bobby's going to marry Lady Elizabeth who's come down from her WAF posting in Scotland. Bobby has rescued a drunken American soldier, Joe, from the street and offers him his plush apartment for his stay in London and arranges for him to hook up with a lady of Bobby's acquaintance, Mabel Crum. Lady Elizabeth turns up unexpectedly and Joe mistakes her for Mabel which makes Elizabeth wonder whether she's ready for marriage. All sorts of wrangles and mistakes follow which stretches out the day into the small hours of the wedding day, but what on earth can happen?

It's great fun and got laughs in all the right places from the largely older audience who easily got the jokes about spam (people told jokes about spam well before Monty Python). The play is set entirely in Bobby's apartment where everyone seems to end up, including Elizabeth's father (a duke and a general), a French lieutenant who fell for Elizabeth on the train journey form Scotland and, of course, the wonderful Mabel Crum.

Mabel is the best character in the play and gets most of the best lines. She's a secretary at the war ministry but is also man-hungry and delights in going out and enjoying herself, and that is how she's known Bobby for ages. She calls herself a trollop but in the best possible way. She has a heart of gold and a very modern view of love and relationships. She also has her own morals. Everyone should have a best friend in a Mabel Crum for some straight talking over a drink or two. Dorothea Myer-Bennett had the good fortune to be cast in the role and she milked it for all it was worth. Well done!

I must also give Michael Lumsden a mention since as soon as he came on I recognised him without knowing quite who he was. I've seen him at the Orange Tree before but it's his voice I recognised - he plays Alistair in 'The Archers'! That's how I knew the voice especially since he's been having a more high profile time in the series recently. He's got pompous old ass down to perfection in this play who gets deliciously conned by the clever Mabel at the end. Serves you right! I also quite liked Philip Labey as Bobby and John Hudson as Bobby's manservant.

Sadly, I left it late in the run to get tickets and the play ends tomorrow so I can't see it again. I think there are still a few tickets left for Saturday so if you haven't seen it and you fancy a laugh in Richmond, head on down to the Orange Tree.

'The Deep Blue Sea' at the National Theatre

'The Deep Blue Sea' is a play by Terence Rattigan from 1952 that doesn't seem to be revived very often but it may be better known as the 1955 film with Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More or the 2011 film with Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. I saw the 1955 film a few years ago in a cleaned up print at the British Film Institute but haven't seen the 2011 version. Neither had I seen the stage play until this week at the National Theatre.

The play takes place over one day in the life of Hester Collyer, a supposedly middle class lady married to Freddie Page and is referred to as 'Mrs Page'. It's the early '50s (the timing is nicely signalled by reference to rationing) and is set in a down at heels boarding house at which the Pages rent the first floor flat. The place is dowdy and dismal and a far cry from what Hester is used to. It open with the landlady and a neighbour forcing open Hester's door because there's a smell of gas, rushing in and finding her on the floor beside the gas fire, apparently a case of suicide. Hester has failed at her suicide because she forgot to fill up the gas metre. And from there the story unfolds.

We learn that Hester is actually married to Judge Collyer, a famous High Court Judge but she's run away with Freddie Page whom they met at a golfing weekend outside London. Freddie was a dashing Spitfire pilot during the war and who made a living as a test pilot until he lost his nerve and turned to drink. Hester was perfectly happy in her loveless marriage - it's what women of her class do, after all - until she met Freddie and theirs is a passionate physical relationship rather than the rather staid round of dinner parties she's used to.

Hester is scared that Freddie is getting bored with her and, when he forgets her birthday, that's when she tries to commit suicide. That in itself reeks of a relationship gone wrong and, later that day, Freddie realises it too, that they're not right for one another and will kill each other eventually so he must leave. It's painful but has to be done and is, quite possibly, the most grown-up thing he's ever done in his life. This prompts Hester to go for suicide again but is interrupted by the blacklisted doctor who lives upstairs who somehow gives her hope by buying one of her early paintings and, when he leaves. allows Hester to pull herself together and look to a more positive future that she must make for herself.

The play takes you on quite an emotional journey, but it's restrained emotion, controlled with a stiff upper lip, very upper middle class and very British. I've seen a few Rattigan plays in the last few years - 'French Without Tears', 'Flare Path', 'The Winslow Boy' - and that's a characteristic they all share. He's a skilled story-teller and that shines through, despite the poshness of his work.

The set was truly depressing, with the big Lyttelton stage dressed as Hester's depressing flat, with sparse furniture, drab furnishings and see-through walls so you can just about make out other people moving in the other flats from time to time which made the very open stage quite claustrophobic. The atmospheric lighting added to that feeling as the play moves through the day. It was all quite bleak.

Helen McCrory plays Hester in what must be an exhausting role since she's on-stage the whole time. She was really quite excellent as the repressed housewife who's found her escape from a humdrum little life into a more exciting world only to have it crumble around her. She made me believe in Hester and want the best for her - and that's good acting. I saw Helen in 'Medea' as the witch-queen and in 'The Last of the Haussmanns' a few years ago, so she can easily go from dramatic and tragic to comedy and this role let her do a bit of both with everything in between.

I was less convinced by Tom Burke as Freddie who came across as boring and a drunk. Yes, that's partly the role but it's also how you play it. Freddie was exciting and a war hero before the booze so where's that aspect to him? Where's the charisma that Kenneth More captured so effortlessly in the film that attracted Hester in the first place. Missing, is where it is. On the other hand, I did like Nick Fletcher as the former doctor with a past who seems to be the voice of reason whenever he appears on stage and who ends up by giving Hester some hope for a future of her own. His performance was underplayed and touching.

It's a play that seems to make the small things big and belittle the big things. It's about love and lust, post-war depression, suicide and the future, but there are also some laughs in the production - it's not all worthy and depressing. It is definitely worth seeing, especially for Helen McCrory's performance and the growth of her character.

'French Without Tears' at the Orange Tree Theatre

We went on another visit to the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond to see the penultimate performance of 'French Without Tears' by Terence Rattigan. How fitting that this tale of upper-middle class young men should be in upper-middle class Richmond. I've seen a few Rattigan plays over the years and they're all of their time, generally including lots of posh people, but the only one I actually liked was his tale of airmen in the Second World War in 'Flare Path' (with Sheridan Smith and Sienna Miller).

'French Without Tears' is one of his earlier plays and is set in a house on the French coast at which various posh young men are staying to learn French. As well as the middle aged teacher and his daughter (who also teaches), a young lady is staying with her brother because she has nowhere else to go since her talks are in India. The appropriately named Diana is a femme fatale and her prey in men. Two of the young men are learning French to help them pass the entrance exams for 'the Diplomatic', another is a rich young man with nothing better to do while another wants to learn French for 'commercial reasons'. They are soon joined by a new student in the form of a stiff upper lip naval commander. And the scene is set.

The constant bickering between the men in the first half makes most of them rather unpleasant characters and Alan who wants to join 'the Diplomatic' since his father is a diplomat is distinctly misogynistic with a definite downer on women and Diana in particular. Diana is a man-hunter, always needing a man to fall in love with her and as soon as she's achieved that then searches for a new man to make fall in love. It's her nature, as she says at one point. When the commander arrives she sets her sights on him and effortlessly wins him, much to the chagrin of Kit, who also loves her. The men start to fight and, during verbal sparring realise that Diana has said the same thing to each of them and realise that game's afoot. This aces them all bond as brothers to fight off the spells of Diana. It was only in the latter stages of this half that I started to see anything likeable in any of the male characters.

In the second half, Kit and the Commander win free so Diana sets her sights on Alan and effortlessly makes him fall for her. O dear, men are such fragile creatures. He also wins free and decides to chuck in becoming a diplomat and wants to go back to England to become a writer. In the meantime, Kit has decided that he really loves Jacqueline, the French teacher who has loved him for two months and the Commander, of course, has his love of the sea. And Diana? Well, there are always other men.

The characters are almost universally awful except for Jacqueline (played by Sarah Winter with a very good accent) who is sympathetic throughout and Brian (played for laughs by Tom Hanson), the bluff Englishman with the atrocious franglais accent and who likes the company of the local ladies of the night for 50 francs a pop. Tom had some of the best lines in the play and plays Brian as a jolly good sport, liked by all, not terribly bright but a good egg. The best line for me was when talking about Diana and how she turns the green light on men she likes then said she was 'pretty stingey with the orange and red ones' - that tickled my funny bone no end. Genevieve Gaunt was also fun (in a two dimensional way given her character) as Diana, never without a cigarette on the go and exposing flesh whenever possible.

The staging was nice but the costumes were awful, with hems frayed and seams not straight and all seemed a little too big for the people wearing them. O well, you can't have it all in small theatres. But, at least, once again, the Orange Tree has put on something a bit different that no-one else seems to want to play so it's worth it for that alone. I'll keep an eye out for Sarah Winter and Tom Hanson - it'll be interesting to see where they turn up next.