Separate Tables

Despite an inauspicious beginning with Harbor Lights, the theatre season in Boston is now developing into something quite stimulating. And one of the best things running at the moment is Separate Tables, Terence Rattigan's brace of plays dealing with the problem of growing old, alone.

Rattigan's symbol for this oppressive and even anxious loneliness is the separate dining room tables of an English residential hotel. In each of the two plays a man and a woman who have rejected each other, but yet cannot stand the separate tables, find each other once again. Meanwhile, other characters who for various reasons do manage to live alone are seated at other single tables, serving as contrasts and catalysts to the central figures.

The two plays follow this form so closely that they might seem a bit tedious. (The attractive landlady is in both plays an almost incredible emblem of self-sufficiency.) But since the two central figures of each play differ so in personality, both expositions of the problem are interesting and seem to have a wide and general significance. In the first play, Margaret Leighton plays a sexually-repressed model, statuesque and "cut out of ice"; in the other she is again sexually repressed, but this time as the whimpering invalid daughter of a domineering mother. Eric Portman is in both cases sexually frustrated, but his first example is that of a hard-drinking, warmly honest journalist would-be politician, while in the second play he becomes a man who doesn't drink, is timid with women, and is only sexually perverted and dishonest with himself.

If the diversity of these characters did not reveal how general a problem Rattigan is stating, the lines he employs would, for he is quite explicit. Perhaps too explicit, for in the second play the invalid daughter is so weak as to be dramatically unexciting. She inspires only pity. As a result, the second play becomes almost a melodrama, with the forces of good and evil lined up like the liberals and McCarthy. But this explicitness does allow Rattigan free play to realize many aspects of the problem.

Considering the shift from strong people in the first play to weak ones in the second, a great variety of acting skills are required of Mr. Portman and Miss Leighton. Although Miss Leighton's invalid daughter is a bit too invalid, in general they both prove themselves more than adequate to the task. Mr. Portman especially exudes a warmth and stage personality which is fascinating to behold. If their parts were less exciting, May Hallett and Phyllis Neilson-Terry, two boarders, were certainly competent.

The only really irritating acting performance is that of Ann Hillary, who persists to shout wordlessly in a rasping voice throughout both plays. If Miss Hillary proves distracting, nothing else detracts from the general success of the play. The sets, while not exciting, are satisfactory. The costumes, especially on Miss Leighton, are more than adequate. But the most striking contributions are those of Eric Portman and Terence Rattigan.