Separate Tables

Published Friday 23 September 2005 at 17:00 by Sheila Tracy

A former resident of Sonning, Terence Rattigan would have been delighted to see Separate Tables being staged at the Mill. Two plays for the price of one, set in a Bournemouth Hotel in the fifties with the same characters, barring the two principals.

Table by the Window has Anthony Valentine as a disgraced former Labour MP, unexpectedly confronted by his ex-wife, the glamorous Glynis Barber, arriving at the hotel with a yearning to meet her former husband once again. It is soon obvious the two are wholly incompatible but nevertheless unable to function apart.

In Table Number Seven, Valentine plays a retired Major who turns out to be a fraud and a molester of women at the local cinema, while Barber is now a mouselike daughter of a formidable mother played with relish by Sarah Badel. The Major and the daughter establish a tentative bond before his misdeeds are reported in the local paper.

Valentine captures the very essence of the two characters with Barber achieving a remarkable transformation from femme fatale to shy, inhibited, unattractive little woman. Two excellent performances, ably supported by Susan Skipper as the manageress, Patricia Kane as the maid and other residents played by Helen Ryan, Dennis Ramsden, Christine Russell, Alix Dunmore and Nick Waring.

Having formerly worked with the playwright for BBC Television, this is Alvin Rakoff’s fourth Rattigan production.