Terence Rattigan’s
The Deep Blue Seaopened in London in March 1952 to a mixed critical reception; however, it ran for 513 performances, an exceptional run at the time for a new, serious play, and, by the time of its first television performance in 1954, was acclaimed by the critic Peter Forster as “the best post-war English play”. However, the reactions of some of the original reviewers to the way in which Rattigan handled the theme of post-war adjustment, while making a woman the central protagonist, reveal how venturesome Terence Rattigan had been in this play.
The daily newspapers in which the reviews appeared differed from today’s in one major aspect: in common with many other items, seven years after the end of the Second World War newsprint was still subject to rationing.
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Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "The Deep Blue Sea". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 July 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30017, accessed 26 November 2024.]
