Flare Path

Terence Rattigan was a tailgunner in the RAF when he wrote the play Flare Path in 1941. He was also a gay man at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence in the UK. He knew all about English repression, guilty secrets and keeping mum about everything important. Judging from this wonderfully upbeat, tense and gripping play, one might suppose that all our boys needed to see off ‘Jerry’ was a stiff upper lip.

Flare Path is filled with characters putting on a brave face and making light of absolute hell, be it the terror of taking off in a Wellington bomber on a moonlit night or of those watching, their ears sharply attuned to the fateful sound of an aircraft flying on one engine.

In the draughty lounge of the Falcon Hotel in Lincolnshire, overlooking the flare path of the local RAF base, wives of servicemen are downing pink gins as they wait for their husbands to return from a perilous night raid. Meanwhile, Peter Kyle, a Hollywood heart-throb, gets caught up in wartime action when he swings by to persuade his former lover, luscious Patricia, to leave her young pilot husband, Teddy, and run away with him. One of the tensions of the play is whether Kyle or ‘Jerry’ will bring down poor Teddy first.

Justin Audibert’s touring revival has the misfortune of flying in while Trevor Nunn’s marvellous 2011 production with Sienna Miller and Sheridan Smith is still fresh in my memory. There are moments when this comparatively thin, cheap and stilted staging feels clunkily melodramatic and the characters reduced to stereotypes. The worst offender is Leon Ockenden’s handsome but rigid Kyle, irritable where he should be passionate. Olivia Hallinan’s Patricia is a flamehaired beauty, but icy and too mask-like even when she realises that her love affair with Kyle is a ‘tiny, cheap little thing’.

Fortunately, there’s warmth to be found elsewhere. A perky Siobhan O’Kelly keeps her chin up when her spirit sinks as the down-to-earth barmaid, Doris, elevated to Countess Skriczevinsky (or ‘Scratch-mebumski’ as she calls herself) by her marriage to a Polish Count and pilot. Alastair Whatley is likeable too as the besotted Teddy, the captain of the bomber, who pretends to be a bit of a chump. As Squadron Leader ‘Gloria’ Swanson, Philip Franks is a delight, at once buttoned-up and spilling over with love and pride for the younger men he sends off, night after night. And in spite of the flaws, I couldn’t hold back the tears.

On a national tour until 28 November: www.originaltheatre.com/our-productions/tickets-flare-path-2015