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The Arts Intel Report

The Deep Blue Sea

July 9–16, 2020
Upper Ground, South Bank, London SE1 9PX, UK

“When you’re between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting. It did last night,” says Hester Collyer to the neighbor who finds her half head, an attempted suicide, at the beginning of Terrence Rattigan’s 1952 play, The Deep Blue Sea. Rattigan’s heroine, we learn, has sacrificed the stable comfort of her prosperous and affectionate husband for the passionate and physical love of Mr. Page. But Page, a former RAF pilot, has grown distant, as if stuck in the sky, and his love has grown cold. A heartbreaking play about what makes life worth living, Carrie Cracknell’s acclaimed production is streaming through mid-July. —C.J.F.