The Winslow Boy – review

If the Tempest provides the greatest analysis of the moral and social disorder of a storm, the Winslow Boy is the most searching example of the same principles confined to a teacup. Basing the plot on a true story , Terence Rattigan dramatised the case of a young naval cadet whose wrongful conviction for theft of a five-shilling postal order is pursued through the highest court in the land. David Thacker 's revival follows all the precepts of a well-made play: it is well acted, well dressed and ought, by rights, to be well out-of-date, except that it presents the Edwardian equivalent of a media frenzy. The old candlestick phone rings practically off the hook, opinions are exchanged on the letters page of the Times like slow-motion tweets, and there is a marvellously comic scene in which Mr Winslow receives a female reporter and finds himself giving an interview about his curtains. The drama, though, rests on the slender shoulders of the young lad at its centre. Fifteen-year-old Octagon youth theatre member Sam Ramsay gives a remarkable performance; not least the impressive manner in which he bends without breaking against the force of cross-examination conducted by Christopher Villiers as Sir Robert Morton, the mighty legal hammer engaged to crack a walnut. Christopher Ravenscroft movingly suggests Mr Winslow's advancing frailty as his reserves of strength and money are devoured by the case; while his wife ( Susan Sylvester ) vacillates between distress at the ruinous cost and delight at the opportunity to update her wardrobe. Georgina Strawson is admirably resolute as their bluestocking daughter, Kate, a determined campaigner for women's suffrage, which, from the perspective of the period the play represents, looks just as hopeless as clearing her little brother of stealing five bob.