Civic Theatre, Darlington – 12 April 2016
What R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End says about the First World War, Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path tries to say about the Second, as a fine new production at Darlington Civic this week demonstrates.
Flare Path differs from Journey’s End, which was written some years after the conflict, in being a report direct from the heart of the war, its outcome still unclear in 1942, presented by Rattigan with all his experience of the grim realities of the times.
This play has the virtue of authenticity in that Rattigan, as a young air gunner, was clearly writing about a world he knew. His setting is a Lincolnshire hotel where RAF pilots and their crews hang out after their night time sorties over German territory. Part of the suspense depends on who will, or will not, return, after one particular raid.
Rattigan’s real concern, however, is with the battle between individual longings and the collective ethos. Peter Kyle (Lynden Edwards), a waning Hollywood star, turns up to reclaim his lost love, Patricia (Hedydd Dylan), now married to bomber pilot, Teddy (Daniel Fraser) for whom she has only polite regard. The moral dilemma lies in Patricia’s decision as to which of the two men needs her more.
Two other squadron wives are also spending the weekend at the hotel with their husbands: Claire Andreadis’ cheery down-to-earth West Country barmaid married to a Polish Count, and now Countess Skriczevinsky, or as she likes to pronounce it “Scratch-your bum-sky”; and despite catching the wrong bus launderette worker Polly Hughes’ Mrs Miller manages to find her way to visit tail gunner Sergeant Miller (Jamie Hogarth).
Leading actor Graham Seed, as Squadron leader Swanson bounces on stage like an exuberant child full of enthusiasm and vigour, William Reay as Polish Flying officer Count Skriczevinsky, amuses with his broken English, as does Audrey Palmer’s no-nonsense hotel landlady, Mrs Oakes.
Rattigan’s sentimental 1942 hit gives the audience an insight into the real-life emotions of a wartime bomber and the strain on the women they leave behind – Andreadis’ Countess, gives most resonance to this.
The production lays on impressive sound of the hefty old bombers taking off as if about to drop their deadly payload on a gawping audience by Dominic Bilkey
Hayley Grindle’s 1940’s hotel set is a joy of a design and the costumes exquisite. The lights for the flare path and the explosions are fabulous but Alex Wardle and Paul Williams triumph with a sublimely beautiful coal fire, which appears to be lit throughout the play
The ending seems too upbeat to ring true but apparently Rattigan did not want his audiences to go home feeling depressed and the audience in Darlington were surely not so.
In Darlington until 16 April and on tour around the UK