ROSS
Chichester Festival Theatre
Opened 9 June, 2016
***

Terence Rattigan’s 1960 drama about T.E. Lawrence is, through no fault of its own, a betwixt-and-between affair. It sets out to treat its subject with greater complexity than the “Lawrence of Arabia” legend (although David Lean had not yet made the biopic that would prove the zenith of that view), yet a combination of limited further information at the time and Rattigan’s reticence about homosexuality (his own as well as his subject’s) meant that the play could only go so far. We see Lawrence’s detachment, not least in that it drove him to seek anonymity by enlisting in the RAF as Aircraftman T.E. Ross, with scenes on the air base in 1922 framing the main account of his role in the Arab Revolt during World War I. We see the arrogance, the spiritual turmoil and especially the disillusionment and disgust after his capture by the Turks in 1917 when he was beaten and raped (again, the sexual dimension can barely be suggested).

Joseph Fiennes, under Adrian Noble’s direction, gives the best stage performance I have seen from him, constantly (and especially post-capture) looking as if he might at any moment be deserted by the last shreds of the self-discipline which is all that is holding him together as he moves amongst others. The 18-strong all-male cast (another odd note to contemporary eyes) also includes Peter Polycarpou as the sheikh with whom alliance proved crucial, Michael Feast as the Turkish military governor, John Hopkins as the fellow RAF recruit who tries to blackmail Ross about his true identity, and in particular Paul Freeman as General Allenby, with whom Lawrence engages in bouts of mutually antagonistic prickliness.

Yet ultimately, the play can do no more than modulate the classic portrait of an unalloyed hero into the more contemporary, but still now somewhat outdated, “flawed hero with some added depth” version. Thus its revival in 2016 inevitably suggests that the more fervid end of Islam would not today be nurturing its dreams of a single caliphate were it not for the efforts of a public-school-educated, masochistic homosexual Englishman a century ago. As such, it may have been a little tactless to schedule this run during Ramadan.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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