REVIEW: Flare Path – at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Tuesday, September 15 to Saturday, September 19, 2015.

ONE of Terence Rattigan’s lesser known plays and arguably not one of his strongest.

This wartime story of romance was written in 1942 as the battle for supremacy in the skies continued to rage between the Allied planes and the German Luftwaffe and takes its time engaging lift-off.

Set in the residents’ lounge of a Lincolnshire hotel where wives and girlfriends of RAF bomber crews dutifully and anxiously await safe returns from their deadly mission, it encompasses an 18-hour period as it centres around the sudden arrival of a Hollywood star who just happens to be the former lover of ex-actress Patricia Warren - now married to Flight Lieutenant Graham.

Olivia Hallinan, all style and elegance is an admirable Patricia, while Alastair Whatley impresses as the fallible Flight Lieutenant, but Leo Ockenden’s Peter Kyle struggles to ignite both the role and past passions. There’s not a great deal to convince the audience of what once was, and as well as this ‘re-union’ lacking the chemistry it also provides worrying signs the play has lost much in the intervening years in neither ageing or travelling well.

However, the hugely experienced Philip Franks provides a timely lift to the proceedings as the jolly Squadron Leader Swanson and there are other stand-out performances too from Stephanie Jacobs as the lively hotel landlady along with Siobhan O’Kelly’s Doris, the wife of Flying Officer Count Skriczevinsky, who in turn was stylishly portrayed by Adam Best.

Lacking the resonance of Rattigan’s excellent Separate Tables and The Winslow Boy it has to be said that Flare Path - although dated - still deserves some credit and recognition, as did all those brave fighter pilots and bomber crews in World War Two. It still commands respect for what it is, especially as it was written and staged in London at a time when the conflict with Nazi Germany was at its height.

VRW