BOOM AND BUST

Anthony Lau's sober revival of Terence Rattigan's 'Man and Boy' offers more to respect than to enjoy, says Alice Saville

- Alice Saville

Dorfman Theatre, London

The great 20th-century playwright Terence Rattigan began his career cheering up embattled wartime audiences with perky comedies like French Without Tears.

That levity famously drained away as the century wore on, but even so, there's something jarringly sombre about Man and Boy, his seldom-revived late-career study of a misanthropic financier's downfall. When it premiered in 1963, critics were scandalised by the sight of a father offering up his son as a toyboy to a millionaire business associate. Anthony Lau's new production tests its 21st-century audience in different ways. We're used to seeing tales of evil rich men leavened by Bond-style plot twists or Succession-esque satirical flourishes - instead, Rattigan's play unfurls soberly and without remorse for either characters or audience.

Rattigan wrote this play in a Britain that was finally starting to boom again after the bleak postwar years. And perhaps it was his way of warning of the crash that could come, if his country cast off its staid financial principles in favour of the US's capitalist free-for-all.