While the Sun Shines

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While the Sun Shines

byTerence Rattigan

Richmond Shakespeare Society at the Mary Wallace Theatre, Twickenham until 22^nd March

Review by Gill Martin

London is in the teeth of the Blitz. But love is the air despite the deprivations of World War Two.

The scene is set beautifully even before the curtain rises at Twickenham’s riverside theatre, the Mary Wallace. Elizabeth Valentine as Rosie Dupree, the Soho Songbird, was in full melodic voice with A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, as the opening night audience took their seats. An evening of gentle humour in this giddy farce where political correctness leaps out the window awaited them in three acts with musical intervals.

Rosie, in elegant black gown, fur stole, string of pearls, extravagant dangling diamanté earrings and ‘forties fashion wavy hairdo, summed up the glamour that London was determined to uphold despite the horrors of nightly bombing raids, rationing and relationships torn asunder.

To that end the capital’s theatres remained open. Playwright Terence Rattigan took full advantage. Just as his literary career was taking off, war broke out. He served as a flight lieutenant in Central Command RAF from 1940 to 1945. After basic training he was assigned as a tail gunner to a squadron of Sunderland bombers, all the while writing between missions hunting enemy submarines in the Atlantic.

During the war years Rattigan had three plays running on Shaftesbury Avenue: Flare Path at the Apollo, Love in Idleness at the Lyric and While the Sun Shines at the Globe. This ran for 1,154 performances as one of his most commercially successful plays. However, when reimagined for the big screen three years later, in 1947, it was a resounding flop, making a loss and with one critic writing that the direction never convinced the viewer that this story was meant to be told anywhere but on the stage.

And the Mary Wallace stages it with aplomb thanks to a talented and well-directed cast, unapologetically mining rich national stereotypes: aristocratic Englishman Bobby, too clueless to gain promotion from Able Seaman in the British Navy; brash Yankee Lieutenant Mulvaney (Tom Redican); passionate Free French Army Lieutenant Colbert (Mark Saunders); serving British Army officer the Duke of Ayr and Stirling, a cad and addicted gambler (Hugh Cox); his guileless daughter and the bride-to be WRAF Corporal Lady Elizabeth (Lucy Mabbitt); loyal manservant Horton, whose facial expressions signal more than a thousand words (Graham Schafer); ditzy blonde tart with a heart Mabel Crum (Sarah Sharpe).

All delight in this production, directed by Stuart Watson, where set, costume and lighting design tick the boxes.

It’s not so much a bedroom farce as in Brian Rix’s repertoire of slamming doors and embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions, but more a sitting room farce set in Lord Harpenden’s chambers in Albany, Piccadilly.

Bobby, the orphaned young Earl, bearing a passing resemblance to Jack Whitehall in looks and nice-but-dim style, has begged for leave from the Royal Navy to marry his naive fiancée, Lady Elizabeth. But on the eve of the wedding in Hanover Square a beefy American airman and an impulsive Free French lieutenant also fall head over heels for the bride-to-be.

Misunderstandings abound. There’s a Scotch-sozzled bride-to-be, two countries separated by a common language, as George Bernard Shaw would say, and Gallic emotion dictating that Elizabeth must not marry a man whose eyes shine, not with white hot passion, but with love reserved for a brother or puppy dog.

All the above conspire against love conquering all as dawn breaks on the day of the wedding. After a fitful night of drinking, scheming and gambling in the Albany, Horton draws open the heavy brocade curtains.

What will happen While the Sun Shines…?

Gill Martin, March 2025

Photography by Steven Lippitt