Love is manifested in different ways.  Rattigan’s plays were criticised with the advent of the Angry Young Men like John Osborne’s Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger and the kitchen sink dramas in 1950s and 60s film.  Noel Coward too got similar “out of fashion” criticism except that in the mid 60s, his plays were revived and celebrated.  In In Praise of Love the characters lie to each other as an expression of their love.

Claire Price leads this 1970s play as Lydia Cruttwell, an Estonian married to an English writer Sebastian Cruttwell (Dominic Rowan).  Lydia seems long suffering and resigned to her husband’s rudeness and lack of consideration.  He can’t even pour his own glass of whisky and complains his reading lamp doesn’t go on or that the heating isn’t working. It is very hard to write in depth about this play without revealing spoilers.  Lydia is hiding that she has a terminal illness from Sebastian while she makes plans for him and his stream of demands after she is dead. 

Visiting Sebastian and Lydia is Mark Walters (Daniel Abelson) an old friend, a very successful novelist, who is attracted to Lydia and whom she can confide in.  Sebastian, despite his middle-class lifestyle counts himself an old fashioned Marxist and despises his son Joey (Joe Edgar)’s working for the Liberal Party on a mid-term by-election. Sebastian calls the Liberals “crypto-fascists”.  Joey has himself written a play which is to be televised by the BBC that week.