"I suppose out of that brilliant playboy talent have come two important plays, The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea. The rest seem to me full of moral evasions. Perhaps any homosexual dramatist who, during a time of secrecy and blackmail, presented his own emotional life in his work as if he were a woman, suffered some terrible disability. Tennessee Williams was the most successful, but then he is woman right through. I think the problem with Rattigan was that even if he had had that opportunity for frankness, his whole repressed class background, the stiff upper lip of Harrow, would have made it impossible for him. Deception and restraint are at the very heart of that kind of Englishman. I suppose it's at the heart of me, heterosexual as I am."
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Peter Hall, diary entry (4 August 1979), quoted in Peter Hall's Diaries: The Story of a Dramatic Battle, ed. John Goodwin (1983), p. 456
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terence_Rattigan
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Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan (10 June 1911 – 30 November 1977) was an English dramatist and screenwriter. His plays include French Without Tears, The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables, all of which have been filmed. Like other proponents of the well-made play he fell out of fashion with the coming of the Angry young men and the kitchen sink drama.
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