Dear Octopus: Lindsay Duncan is a catty delight in this forgotten West End hit
It may come as a surprise to many that Dodie Smith, best known for her novels I Capture the Castle and The Hundred and One Dalmatians, was an interwar West End sensation. She could rival No?l Coward for the rate at which she churned out well-received drawing-room comedies: Dear Octopus, which premiered in 1938 starring John Gielgud, was her sixth hit play in seven years.
But, unlike her books, Smith’s plays fell out of fashion; Dear Octopus hasn’t been seen since 1988 (at the Theatre Royal Windsor). One reason is surely logistical: a sprawling four-generation saga, it has 17 characters, including several precocious children (I confess I struggled to keep the family tree straight). The plotting is also rather soapy, with not one but two long-lost relations returning from abroad for this golden-wedding celebration of Charles and Dora, plus a raft of unrequited passions and much-teased secrets.
However, Emily Burns’s beautifully sensitive revival makes a persuasive case that Smith’s work has been unfairly neglected, as well as revealing the writer to be queen of the zinger. Imperious matriarch Dora, who is forever finding “little jobs” for everyone, gets the best of these acid putdowns, and the great Lindsay Duncan delivers them with the catty glee of Maggie Smith in her Downton pomp.
Regarding her heavily made-up, and suspiciously youthful-looking, sister-in-law Belle, she quips: “It must be very worrying to take a face like that out in the rain”. As for the local girls helping out in the kitchen – naturally, they’re illegitimate. “Villages are like that,” explains Dora. “We’ve been a little better since we had the cinema.”
But it’s not all bons mots. Burns draws out the Chekhovian melancholy beneath the reunion – how it makes this fractious clan wrestle with loss, ageing and a changing world. One poignant scene sees the grown-up siblings gather in their old nursery, the ghosts of their late brother and sister hanging between them. Grief is movingly described as “a Limbo of the mind” in a work that takes faith seriously as a bulwark between us and a terrifying void.
There is also savagery beneath the civilised veneer: only your relations can wound you so expertly (the title refers to the inescapable tentacles of family). But the cruellest treatment is meted out by bumptious son Nicholas to Fenny, Dora’s overworked “companion”, who is hopelessly in love with him. Bessie Carter (daughter of Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter) is a heart-rending revelation.
Frankie Bradshaw’s ravishing revolving set is almost another character. Dora refuses to countenance electricity or central heating, so the house is moodily lit by paraffin lamps and the shivering visitors gather around smoky log fires. However, any discomfort pales in comparison with what’s to come. “I only missed the war by inches,” Nicholas chirrups – yet doom-laden radio broadcasts portend the next. On Dear Octopus’s opening night, word spread that Neville Chamberlain was flying to meet Hitler in a last-ditch effort. But Smith’s prophetic play mourns a way of life, and a sliver of peacetime, that is already gone. This is poignant, exquisitely performed theatre.
Until March 27. Tickets: 020 3989 5455; nationaltheatre.org.uk
