Terence Rattigan’s highly regarded 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea is a quintessentially English drama from a very specific time, written when the country was still recovering from the war. It’s worlds removed from Australia today, and this Sydney Theatre Company production never quite manages to cross that divide. The world on stage rarely feels entirely real and so we remain disconnected from the piece, despite a strong performance from Marta Dusseldorp in the central role of the anguished Hester Collyer.

Written as a reaction to the repressive social climate in England at that time, when homosexuality and suicide were illegal, and living with someone to whom you weren’t married was regarded as “living in sin”, the play appears to have been triggered by a tragic incident in Rattigan’s life. The playwright had had a secret relationship with a younger actor called Kenneth Morgan, who had left him for a younger man. In 1949, Rattigan received a call telling him that Morgan had gassed himself to death in a London bedsit.

Marta Dusseldorp, Paul Capsis and Matt Day. Photograph © Daniel Boud

The Deep Blue Sea begins with Hester Collyer – or Mrs Page as...