Terence Rattigan: The Playwright as Battlefield

The theatrical world Terence Rattigan built is vital but disturbing and uniquely constructed. His sentences are not impacted or fractured, and his plots usually obey a linear time sequence. Yet his realism isn't all that real. Though sentence by sentence, his dialogue sounds natural, the creative pulse behind it is idiosyncratic and self-lacerating. As a gay man writing at a time when homosexuality was a felony in the UK, Rattigan wrote at a skewed angle to his culture, making his plays at times easy to follow but hard to fathom. Terence Rattigan: The Playwright as Battlefield examines the ways in which Rattigan's works turn their audiences into participants, encouraging intellectual independence and freeing them to make decisions for themselves as to the deeper meanings of the works. The playwright's omission of outright explanations deepens the audience's emotional commitment to the outcomes of the performance, and walks a fine line between restraint and invention. His works convey subtly and deceptively the cold obstinacy that thwarts our everyday actions in a way which that is felt viscerally by the audience. This book engages works from throughout Rattigan's early and late career to examine the unique methods by which the playwright conveys meaning to various audiences within an ever-changing sociocultural context.

About the Author :
Peter Wolfe is curators' professor of English emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Review :
The recent surge of interest in the work of Terence Rattigan is well-augmented by Peter Wolfe's thorough re-appreciation of Rattigan's relevance to modern British drama. It was about time. 'Terence, the next generations hardly knew ye or your plays.' Peter Wolfe has done us all a favor with this necessary book.--Terrence McNally Peter Wolfe, one of our most steadfast and discerning critics, repositions Terence Rattigan as a playwright who deftly anticipated 'audience expectation' yet displayed 'everyday regrets' that bespoke a profound inner loneliness. Wolfe argues convincingly that Rattigan is central to twentieth-century British drama.--Nicholas Birns, New York University This investigation of the work of prolific British playwright Terence Rattigan (1911-77) presents an in-depth analysis of his corpus. Wolfe (emer., Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis) examines Rattigan's work in five thematic chapters: "Hiding in Plain Sight," "Queering the Queer World," "Some English Families at Home," "Homes Away from Home," and "Reaching Out and Pulling Back." Wolfe's analysis of Rattigan's plays and their reception by the critics and the public illuminate primarily the playwright's presumed psychological state of mind and internal struggles and only then the significance of his work. The author is deft in tracing Rattigan's inner conflict between desire for popular success--i.e., appealing to conventional tastes in both subject matter and form--and his personal status as an outsider in the culture of Great Britain, where homosexuality was a felony for most of his career. Offering a welcome reassessment through the lens of a different cultural framework, this volume rehabilitates a playwright who fell into disfavor with the critics of the time for being too conventional and perhaps too genteel. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- "Choice Reviews"