Word: rattigan
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...Sleeping Prince (by Terence Rattigan) turns on his side now and then, and mumbles and stirs, but never once wakes up. Having given Broadway-in Separate Tables-the season's liveliest theater to date, Playwright Rattigan here blindly scattereth poppy while contriving poppycock. His scene is the Carpathian legation in London at the time of George V's coronation. His "occasional fairy tale" concerns a fetching young American chorus girl whom a Grand Duke invites for supper, and the night. But after a night rendered blameless by too much vodka, she stays on to meet and beguile...
...both plays Rattigan sounds a like theme-expressed in the symbolism of separate tables-of the awful aloneness, the need for others, of the down-at-heel and down-at-heart. But otherwise, there is a sharp contrast between two lives badly lived and two not lived at all, and a glorious opportunity, on the stars' part, for virtuoso acting. Actor Portman changes as brilliantly from an enraged but powerless bull to a neatly clipped but bleating, lamb as does Actress Leighton from a hard, sick, glossy siren to a sick, quivering dowd. And, as staged by Peter Glenville...
Separate Tables (by Terence Rattigan) brings quicksilver to a Broadway season still lacking in blood. A big London hit, Separate Tables is as much stunt as drama in effect, as much production as play in appeal. The author of The Winslow Boy and 0 Mistress Mine has written two short plays with a shared background -a small, drab, English seaside hotel-and a recurrent roster of guests. In passing from one play to the other, only the two leading players, Margaret Leighton and Eric Portman-and they vary garishly-have new roles...
Barring a certain garrulity, Playwright Rattigan has done his full share-in characterization and atmosphere, in sharp touches and emotional scenes-to make such stunt-writing prosper. Indeed, his vivid theater sense is a little disastrously triumphant. There are times when the first drama seems more than arrant make-believe, seems concerned with truth. Unfortunately, Playwright Rattigan has never had the courage of his conceptions, and here-as in The Deep Blue Sea-he wobbles into a miserable happy ending. And in the second play, where he might seem to be protesting against much that is amiss in English life...
...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...