After my Isle of Wight post referencing Sienna Miller at Steephill Cove, the least we could do was return the favour and visit her in her current West-End show at the Haymarket.
It's Terence Rattigan's wartime story of a Bomber Command airbase in Lincolnshire and the to-ings and fro-ings based in the adjacent hotel. Rattigan himself was a tail-gunner on bombers, so there's some direct realism to parts of the plotline as well as the central story of the actress played by Sienna.
The main plot is a love triangle handled with 1940's embarrassed manners and massive use of understatement, except for moments when the stress of bottled up emotions are allowed to run riot.
We get a spectrum of English class portrayed within the confines of the hotel suite with riotous off-stage bawdiness in the adjacent lounge bar.
The story's backdrop revolves around the air-crew spending time in the hotel between missions. To the front is the playing out of the scenes between Sienna, her movie-star lover and her bomber pilot husband from a whirlwind wartime romance.
Throw in a perilous overnight mission and there's a full and engaging story for the characters.
A very enjoyable production, a warm-hearted ending and some insights into a very different world of some 70 years ago.
