Desert messiah or a naughty boy?
Ross (Festival Theatre, Chichester) Verdict: Biggles with angst ★★★✩✩
THE truth about Lawrence of Arabia (aka ‘Ross’) will probably remain cloaked in mystery. Much of what we know of T. E. Lawrence’s desert exploits in the Arabian war against the Ottoman Empire from 1916-1918 he wrote himself.
But this formed the basis of Terence Rattigan’s 1960 rambling historical saga, which has been revived, with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. In it, Lawrence comes across as a fancy dress Biggles with existential angst.
The play starts with Lawrence trying to hide his celebrity by changing his name to ‘Ross’ after joining the RAF in 1922.
Rattigan’s main focus, however, is the Arabian years spent fighting alongside Arab militias and becoming a local hero. But this is no hagiography, and Rattigan presents an inscrutable Lawrence racked with guilt over war crimes and his collusion with British authorities.
Ross insists the only God he worships is in his head and is called ‘The Will’. Yet, because Ross’s will is not allied to a higher purpose, it ultimately proves a shaggy dog story. The naturally earnest Fiennes becomes not so much Arab messiah as a very naughty boy. An eccentric ascetic who didn’t like to be touched, he proves it’s hard to love a loveless man. Instead, we’re asked to think of Ross as a repressed homosexual.
That said, there is plenty of derring-do over Adrian Noble’s three-hour production. Fiennes invests his sometimes morose role with the gloomy, intense look of a wounded schoolboy.
Introverted yet dashing, wittily outflanking enemies and senior officers, he veers between David Niven and John Le Mesurier’s Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army.
Warmly greeted by Chichester’s senior citizens for whom the Lawrence of Arabia legend may loom larger, it’s hard to imagine its sustained appeal for younger audiences.
If it has anything to say about the Middle East today, it is only that it has long been in chaos.