With smoking ashtrays and half-empty whiskey glasses littering the set, it would hardly seem shocking if Don Draper strode across the stage for The Deep Blue Sea. A dark domestic drama set in post-war England, The Deep Blue Sea gains its strength through a meticulous attention to detail.
From full-fashioned stockings with seams up the back to a rich yet precise dialogue, nothing in the production is out of place. As a history and theater major, director Shawn Summers (COL ’12) hoped to evoke the true environment of Terence Rattigan’s play, grounding it in its era.
“For us, it’s new to produce something so historical. The play is very rooted in its Englishness and time period, but it’s also a very human—and a very real—story,” Summers said.
As a collaboration between Nomadic Theatre and Mask and Bauble, much thought went into choosing a play that fit both troupes’ styles.
“In student theater in particular, it’s very easy to move productions into the abstract, and something meticulous like this is far harder to do,” Summers said. Mask and Bauble and Nomadic certainly rose to the challenge, and their effort shows.
The Deep Blue Sea unfolds slowly at first, but suddenly unravels into a mess of tensions as details slip out one by one. Opening with an unsuccessful suicide, the play finds Hester Collyer, played by Vivian Cook (COL ’13), rediscovering her footing in life, even while she’s uncertain she wants to continue living.
Though at first it appears Hester hoped to take her life because her lover forgot her birthday—“I’m a golf widow,” she sighs—the depth of her unhappiness slowly reveals itself even as she puts on a calm face for her guests.
After a slip by the landlady, other tenants of the apartment find out that Hester—who had been going by her lover’s name as Mrs. Page—is still married to Sir William Collyer, a judge and member of high society. Thinking she may not survive, the neighbors call Sir William to the apartment, where Hester wakes to find her estranged husband at the door, his Rolls Royce parked in the street outside.
Caught between two distinctly different men, Hester’s pain doesn’t arise simply from a struggle between love and lust. She understands the way society looks at her, but cannot move past the gaps between her understanding of love and the way the two men see her. Sir William doesn’t want love, he wants a loving wife; Freddie Page seems to love the idea of Hester, but realizes quickly that their relationship is toxic to the both of them.
Provided with such complex characters, much of The Deep Blue Sea’s strength lies in the incredible interaction between the actors. Cook deftly matches Hester’s fluctuations in emotion, slipping from a pained sarcasm among nosy onlookers to a pleading sadness with Mr. Miller. Miller, stripped of his medical title in an unrevealed scandal, provides more than emergency care for an unstable Hester.
Played by Erik Mortensen (SFS ’12), Miller is the only character to breach Hester’s wall and delve into her unhappiness. Not having acted since freshman year, Mortensen tackled Miller’s enigmatic character incredibly.
“It took work and determination to bring him out to the audience,” Mortensen said. “Although I haven’t been involved in theater for the past few years, I’m glad that Miller was such a challenging character to play. I’m happy to have a theater homecoming in The Deep Blue Sea.”
The cast also includes a strong group of freshmen, including Will Redmond (COL ’15), Kathleen Hill (SFS ’15) and Albert Scerbo (COL ’15). Scerbo, who plays Hester’s lover Freddie Page, jumped right into the production. “It was nothing like I expected,” he said.
Although this is Scerbo’s first production at Georgetown, he said, “theater was kinda all I did in high school. It was my life.” Watching him interact with Cook and Redmond, his dedication is obvious.
From the actors’ delivery to the detailed set, the production takes care in every detail of the play. “I even got down and used a black sharpie to fill in the scuffs on the front of the stage,” said producer Melissa Miller (COL ’12). With all these elements combined, The Deep Blue Sea comes together faultlessly on stage.
