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“Chaika Theatre’s rendition is gripping, intelligent and deeply affecting… Under Tony Knight’s direction, the tension between social expectations and the swell of emotional undercurrent is always present… [Jenna] Roberts has a breathtaking ability to convey anguish, confusion, intelligence and resilience, with a searingly dry humour, often while speaking words that contradict what her countenance conveys… Chaika Theatre’s THE DEEP BLUE SEA brims with humanity. The powerful performances and extraordinary writing will leave you thinking for a long time afterwards.”

You can read Cathy Bannister’s full review on the Stage Whispers website.

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight

THE DEEP BLUE SEA must close 27 June.

Written by Terence Rattigan
Directed by Tony Knight
Presented by Chaika Theatre

Featuring Jenna Roberts, Michael Sparks OAM, Sol Mason, Karen Vickery, Kate Blackhurst, Jack Shanahan, Blue Hyslop, Meaghan Stewart.

Chaika Theatre presents a fresh, emotionally charged interpretation of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, a timeless exploration of love, loss, and personal struggle.

Set in the post-war austerity of 1950s London, the play follows Hester Collyer, a woman trapped in a turbulent affair with a passionate but troubled ex-fighter pilot, while grappling with the devastating consequences of her emotional isolation.

This new production breathes life into Rattigan’s masterpiece, with a bold, modern sensibility and intimate staging that captures the raw complexity of human relationships.

With powerful performances and a delicate balance between despair and resilience, Chaika Theatre’s THE DEEP BLUE SEA is a poignant journey into the heart of a woman’s battle for self-liberation.

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight

It’s opening night! Meet the talented cast of THE DEEP BLUE SEA, directed by Tony Knight (who also happens to be the photographer behind these gorgeous shots!)

CAST

Hester · Jenna Roberts
Sir William Collyer · Michael Sparks
Freddie Page · Sol Mason
Miller · Karen Vickery
Mrs Elton · Kate Blackhurst
Philip · Jack Shanahan
Jackie Jackson · Blue Hyslop
Ann · Meaghan Stewart

CREATIVES

Director · Tony Knight
Assistant Director & Costume · Ylaria Rogers
Design · Michael Sparks OAM
Artworks · Leigh Penton & Kerry Wode / Lillian Vickery & John Vickery
Lighting & Stage Management · Disa Swifte
Sound · Neville Pye
Composition · Paris Scharkie
Properties & Medical Consultant · Yanina Clifton
Intimacy Consultant · Jill Young
Rehearsal Prompter · Michael Cooper
Marketing Support · Karina Hudson

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Karina Hudson, Jarrad West, Anne Somes, Norman Collings, Kartya, Rhiley Winnett, St Columba’s Uniting Church, Canberra Rep

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight

26 May 2026: The Deep Blue Sea, Rehearsal Diary #5:

Recently we have been concentrating on the wider community of the play: the inhabitants of a working-class boarding house in Ladbroke Grove, London. Today, of course, Ladbroke Grove has become rather fashionable, which is the inevitable fate of nearly every interesting working-class district. Artists move in because rents are cheap, then cafés appear selling coffee with emotional backstories, and eventually no one can afford to live there except doctors, lawyers, politicians, and those from I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!

But in the 1950s, Rattigan’s world was still unmistakably lower middle-class and working-class, and English drama depends upon class distinctions with the same fervour that French cooking depends upon butter. One cannot simply say, “These people are British.” One must know precisely how British, and in what direction.

Mrs Elton, the concierge-landlady, Ann and Phillip Mitchell, and Mrs Miller all occupy this social world quite naturally. Hester, Sir William, Freddie, and Jackie decidedly do not. They are upper middle-class people who have, through passion and circumstance, drifted downward socially and geographically, ending up among people with whom they would ordinarily exchange only apologetic smiles at railway stations. This distinction matters enormously. English class is not merely economic; it is vocal, physical, architectural, and occasionally digestive.

Fortunately, we have a couple of actors from the UK in the cast, and they navigate this landscape instinctively, often helping the others with marvellous specificity. Rehearsals have consequently become littered with references to EastEnders, Coronation Street, Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em, and, for reasons I no longer entirely understand, George Formby.

I myself have become rather obsessed and absurdly fond of George Formby. At one point I encouraged the actor playing Philip to channel a touch more Formby energy; by which I mean cheerful bewilderment mixed with the suspicion that trousers may at any moment fail structurally. The “urban little man” as Formby was called. I am also dangerously close to allowing snippets of “When I’m Cleaning Windows” or “Leaning on a Lamp-post” into rehearsal simply because they delight me. Both songs, naturally, were once considered scandalously improper, which is usually an excellent recommendation.

We shall see where all this leads. Theatre rehearsals are rather like cooking stews: one adds ingredients gradually and hopes not to poison anyone before opening night

Tony Knight, Director

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight ()
🔁 Repost from Chaika

24 May 2026: The Deep Blue Sea, Rehearsal Diary #4

Rattigan – The Deep Blue Sea – The ‘Erotic Three’

The “erotic three” is one of literature’s oldest contraptions, appearing everywhere from Euripides’ Hippolytus to Racine’s Phaedra, to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Sartre’s No Exit. The arrangement is deceptively simple: one person desires too much, one person desires too little, and a third stands nearby suffering with dignity. Two lovers alone are dramatically useless; introduce a third person and suddenly civilization acquires tragedy, philosophy, and the need for long silences.

Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea is perhaps the most English version of this ancient triangle ever written. Hester Collyer has left her husband, Sir William, a grave and dependable judge, for Freddie Page, a charming ex-RAF pilot whose chief characteristic is emotional inadequacy. Like the unstoppable heroines before her, Hester abandons safety for passion, only to discover that passion largely consists of anxiety in rented rooms. Freddie belongs to that dangerous class of men who inspire devotion precisely because they cannot return it properly.

Sir William occupies the eternally tragic role of the rejected, civilized man. Audiences feel he ought to prevail simply because he is decent, but drama rarely rewards decency. Passion invariably chooses instability. What makes Rattigan remarkable is that he stages this classical agony not in palaces or mythic landscapes, but in a drab postwar flat. Racine needed royal courts; Rattigan achieves the same devastation with ci******es, awkward pauses, and someone quietly asking for and seeking a gentle release.

Tony Knight, Director

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight
🔁 Repost from Chaika

16 May 2026: The Deep Blue Sea, Rehearsal Diary #3

Over the past several rehearsals I have found myself afterwards in a curious blue funk – the sort of bemused melancholy that arrives not dramatically, but quietly, like a cat entering through a window you were certain was closed.

This, I fear, is entirely Rattigan’s fault.

He possesses that alarming quality shared by only a handful of playwrights: an ability to understand the human heart better than the people currently using theirs. His characters are, as one critic beautifully described them, “eloquently anguished,” which may be the finest phrase ever coined for intelligent people who cannot possibly do the sensible thing.

The central dilemma of THE DEEP BLUE SEA is one most of us recognize immediately, though we spend years pretending otherwise: broken heart and broken dreams. What does one do when ‘caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,’ where every available choice seems catastrophic? One may leap toward disaster, retreat toward despair, or remain perfectly still while life collapses around one with admirable politeness.

Naturally, theatre adores this condition. Indeed, the play reminded me repeatedly of Ray Lawler’s SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL, another great work from roughly the same era, similarly concerned with love, dignity, broken dreams, and adults old enough to know better but not old enough to stop trying. Both plays concern relationships existing slightly outside the approved social boundaries of their time, and both understand that heartbreak becomes more complicated, not less, after forty. Young people in plays often behave as though emotions were being invented for the first time. Mature adults know emotions are old, recurring illnesses and behave accordingly.

At the centre of Rattigan’s play lies what Freud and Jung would probably call an “erotic triangle,” though I suspect each would insist upon slightly different upholstery. Theatre is remarkably fond of these arrangements. One sees them everywhere once one begins looking: MISS JULIE, for instance, and any number of tragedies involving people standing too close to French windows.

And at the centre of this particular triangle stands Hester Collyer – one of the great wounded souls of modern drama. Hester’s act at the beginning of the play sends shockwaves through everyone around it: pity, fury, shame, tenderness, denial, practical inconvenience, and above all self-deception, which is humanity’s most dependable renewable resource.

As we work through these scenes in rehearsal, I find myself carrying the emotional residue home afterward like soot on a coat. No wonder I emerge feeling slightly haunted. One spends several hours each day examining broken hearts under theatrical lighting and expects somehow to remain cheerful afterward. It is unreasonable, really.

Tony Knight, Director

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight
🔁 Repost from Chaika

12 May 2026: The Deep Blue Sea, Rehearsal Diary #2

Owing to teaching commitments in Adelaide, my first proper rehearsal with the cast occurred somewhat later than planned. By then, the company had already embarked upon readings and preparations under the calm and capable stewardship of Ylaria and Karen, which was fortunate, because had they not been capable I should have had to become capable myself, and that would have delayed everything considerably. I arrived, therefore, less like a conquering director and more like a man entering the third chapter of a novel while still trying to remember everyone’s names from the first.

The rehearsal itself resembled a staged reading, though that term scarcely captures the peculiar athleticism required by a traverse stage, where the audience sits opposite itself and actors must continually remember that while they may have a left profile worthy of a Roman coin, no one wishes to look at it uninterrupted for three acts. Traverse staging is a splendid arrangement if one enjoys geometry, diplomacy, and low-grade panic.

I told the actors not to concern themselves with “blocking,” which is theatre’s polite term for organized confusion. Instead, I wanted them to investigate the physical reality of the play – the actual lived condition of people trapped together in rooms, relationships, and emotional predicaments. I have long suspected that the physical truth is more reliable than the emotional truth, chiefly because emotional truth, left unattended, tends to lounge about dramatically and demand admiration. Physical truth, by contrast, must put the kettle on, sit in chairs, avoid bumping into tables, and continue breathing while miserable.

Happily, the actors seized upon this with wonderful instinct and intelligence. There is no greater comfort to a director than discovering that the cast understands the play almost before he has finished explaining it to himself. One leaves rehearsal feeling less like a commander of artistic forces and more like a man who has accidentally boarded the correct train.

And what a play to work with. Rattigan gives actors the sort of material that makes them look dangerously intelligent. One scarcely has to direct at all; one simply tries not to interfere with the machinery.

Tony Knight, Director

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight
🔁 Repost from Chaika

21 April 2026: The Deep Blue Sea, Rehearsal Diary #1

We’ve spent a couple of weeks now from the excitement of the first read through of the play as a company. Always a thrilling, nerve-wracking, and galvanising moment – as the company of actors and creatives come together to discover the play as an ensemble and to experience for the first time something of what each artist brings. Thrilling and full of surprises.

For two weeks of rehearsals… a period of 9 hours per week… we dug into Rattigan’s layered text uncovering and excavating what lies beneath, cracking open possibilities and asking questions; exploring relationships between characters and discussing the time, place and world of the play.

Then, our wonderful Assistant Director, Ylaria Rogers, led the company through a physical exploration of the play, moving us from the table to the floor – unlocking the actors’ responses and physicalising the action… word made flesh. Impulse and exploration and play.

Then, our director, Tony Knight, arrived from interstate. We leaped into putting the play on its feet – building on the text work and impulse work we’d explored and discovering the shape and arc of the play. Working at pace with depth and rigour left us breathless with excitement. We’ve fallen in love with this complex, poignant and witty play.

At the same time we’ve been working toward the design, the sound, and lighting as we move collectively toward realising our version of Rattigan’s masterpiece.

Stand by for the cast and creatives announcement coming soon – and for further instalments of the rehearsal diary, penned by various members of the company, as we head toward our opening at ACT Hub on 12 June.

Karen Vickery, Producer and Actor

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

📸 Tony Knight
🔁 Repost from Chaika

Chaika Theatre presents a fresh, emotionally charged interpretation of Terence Rattigan’s THE DEEP BLUE SEA, a timeless exploration of love, loss, and personal struggle.

Set in the post-war austerity of 1950s London, the play follows Hester Collyer, a woman trapped in a turbulent affair with a passionate but troubled ex-fighter pilot, while grappling with the devastating consequences of her emotional isolation.

This new production breathes life into Rattigan’s masterpiece, with a bold, modern sensibility and intimate staging that captures the raw complexity of human relationships.

With powerful performances and a delicate balance between despair and resilience, Chaika Theatre’s THE DEEP BLUE SEA is a poignant journey into the heart of a woman’s battle for self-liberation.

Written by Terence Rattigan
Directed by Tony Knight
Featuring Jenna Roberts, Michael Sparks, Sol Mason, Karen Vickery, Kate Blackhurst, Jack Shanahan, Blue Hyslop, Meaghan Stewart

🌊 The Deep Blue Sea
💙 12–27 June 2026
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au

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🌲 Into the Woods · 29–30 May
💚 2026 Hub-Athon fundraising campaign · ends 31 May
🎟️ Tickets at acthub.com.au