Recently re-screened after the BBC4 appreciation of Terence Rattigan on his centenary, 'After the Dance' is a tragicomedy which gets closer to the bone of Rattigan's obsessions about love and success, than his more well known works such as 'The Browning Version', or 'The Deep Blue Sea'. In this a young woman enters a brittle and superficial world of upper-middle class parties, and lures the main protagonist David Scott-Fowler from his wife Joan, in order to 'save' him from his indolent life and his futile pretence of being a writer.
The implication that David and Joan are in a loveless marriage of convenience, has faint echoes in Rattigan's life since he was gay and many of his themes transposed gay love into a heterosexual milieu. The fact that Joan really does love David leads to tragic results. The late Anton Rodgers' pitch perfect performance as David, and Gemma Jones' beautifully brittle Joan make this one of the most outstanding examples of the transference of theatre to the small screen I have ever seen. Acting as a mirror to the follies of the main characters, John Bird supplies both wit and gravitas as David's best friend John Reid. All this takes place with the backdrop of the impending 2nd World War, when things are never going to be the same again for the bright young things who as Reid says: 'only they never were bright and now they're not even young'.
The implication that David and Joan are in a loveless marriage of convenience, has faint echoes in Rattigan's life since he was gay and many of his themes transposed gay love into a heterosexual milieu. The fact that Joan really does love David leads to tragic results. The late Anton Rodgers' pitch perfect performance as David, and Gemma Jones' beautifully brittle Joan make this one of the most outstanding examples of the transference of theatre to the small screen I have ever seen. Acting as a mirror to the follies of the main characters, John Bird supplies both wit and gravitas as David's best friend John Reid. All this takes place with the backdrop of the impending 2nd World War, when things are never going to be the same again for the bright young things who as Reid says: 'only they never were bright and now they're not even young'.