The Rattigan revival continues. Some of the plays of Sir Terence Rattigan given productions in the past year or two are among his best known (at the moment, The Deep Blue Sea is playing at the National Theatre and French Without Tears at the Orange Tree), others less so. In some instances the case for staging is obvious, in others... well. While The Sun Shines is one of the dot-dot-dot-well ones.

It dates from 1943, and offers a portrait of wartime London as a hotbed of casual and often international sexual liaisons, such that protagonist Bobby’s fiancée Elizabeth is propositioned within the space of a few minutes by lieutenants from the U.S. Army Air Corps and the Free French forces. But it’s not a terribly substantial portrait, since this is a) a farce, and b) sclerotically class-bound, much more than it means to be.

Even more than the cosmopolitan sexuality, this is a London where the entire war effort seems to be conducted by members of the belted aristocracy in their free moments, as a kind of desultory pastime. Bobby is only an ordinary seaman but is the Earl of Harpenden, Elizabeth a WRAF corporal but the daughter of a duke (who at least has the decency to be a general). Is this English self-parody? No: the American’s ignorance is shown by his referring to the location of Bobby’s “chambers” as the Albany (what a gaffe!), and the inevitable tart with a heart is given the thudding cartoon-prole name Mabel Crum and ultimately shows the sense not to rise above her station by marrying Bobby on the rebound.

Christopher Luscombe’s production is smooth, eschewing the rising intensity required even in the kind of farce, like this, that depends more on characters and their responses than on events; I suspect Rob Heaps as Bobby could have his ear bitten off and react with no more than a muttered “Oh, really!”  Luscombe also adds a few moments of choreographed responses among several actors which suggest that he thinks the material either needs or at least supports such faffing around. World War Two may have changed the world irrevocably, but the impression here is that it was won on the playing fields of... actually, of Harrow.

Written for the Financial Times.