Separate Tables

Basil Rathbone is an old pro; Geraldine Page is a young pro. These two stars, collaborating in Terence Rattigan's masterfully written Separate Tables, are providing the Boston Summer Theatre with its best show of the season so far.

Separate Tables is actually a brace of plays--Table by the Window and Table Number Seven--both laid in a modest English private hotel. Both plays are studies in different types of loneliness; and both, aside from the two leads, employ the same set of characters. There is plenty of humor, but the themes are basically serious.

The first play shows us Mr. Malcolm, a sloppy middle-aged failure and exconvict who has turned to left-wing writing and the bottle. He is confronted after eight years by his twice-divorced ex-wife, a 40-year-old beauty "carved in ice"--vain, mendacious, and desperate--who "can't face getting old." Their reconciliation at the end, we know, will be short-lived. All the other hotel residents are lonely too, but they hate to admit it.

In Table Number Seven, the shy, mal-adjusted spinster daughter of a domineering mother is traumatically affected by the disclosure that Major Pollock, her one friend, not only is not a major at all but also has a penchant for taking manual liberties with strange women in movie theatres.

Citing this play in an article in last Sunday's New York Times, the British author Stephen Spender said: "The way in which a talent can be damped down by success to the faintest squeak of social protest is shown (here) ... where the writer's plea for sympathy with the man who gets off with girls in cinemas is a pill covered under about sixteen layers of sugar." True, the play was originally intended as a dramatization of the actual case of a well-known British actor with a taste for young men. But the result, watered down though it be, still has a point; and Rattigan, with a sure ear for dialogue, makes it clearly and movingly.

Top acting honors go to Miss Page for her portrayal of the divorcee and the spinster (which Margaret Leighton attempted so inadequately in the pre-Broadway tryout here two years ago). For some reason I had never seen her act before, and it is a pleasure to report that all the acclaim and awards she has received are well deserved indeed.

What vocal control and timing she has! Her performance in either play alone would be an impressive achievement. But her ability to undergo such a transformation during intermission is almost uncanny. And this is much more than a change of costume, makeup and wig; she does it through her posture, gait, gesture, diction and other ways. Through extraordinary muscular control, she is able to change her whole repertory of facial contours from those of a stunning beauty to those of an uncomely nobody. Genius is not a word to be tossed about lightly; but Miss Page has unmistakable marks of genius. She has moments that are way beyond the reach of all but a few actresses.

Rathbone is highly effective in the second play, if not quite up to Eric Port-man, who was his Broadway predecessor. He is not yet so much at home in the first play. He is habitually cool, clean, clipped and polished; and it is clearly an effort for him to be awkward, slovenly, and impetuous.

The two stars enjoy an uncommonly fine supporting cast--better than the Broadway one, and better directed: Catherine Proctor as the weak-willed Lady Matheson; Ann Shoemaker as the self-righteous, over-protective mother; Lucy Landau as a frank, portly horserace-enthusiast; Edgar Kent as a quiet ex-schoolmaster; Ralph Purdum as a liberal-minded medical student; Audrey Ridgwell as the coolly over-efficient hotel proprietress with a warm heart; and Adele Thane and Barbara Lester as waitresses. Only Ann Stanwell, as the student's girl, is below par.

Mr. Rattigan's expert script and Miss Page's phenomenal performances should not easily be passed up.