SOURCE: Spencer, Charles. “Rattigan with His Heart on His Sleeve.” Daily Telegraph (8 March 1995): 15.

In the following review, Spencer provides a mixed assessment of the 1995 London production of In Praise of Love.

One of the most welcome theatrical trends of recent years has been the rediscovery of Terence Rattigan. Outstanding productions of The Browning Version and The Deep Blue Sea have revealed this once derided dramatist to be a writer of exceptional insight and sympathy, a poet of the British stiff upper lip. In Praise of Love features many of his humane strengths without achieving the overwhelming depth of emotion of his greatest work. It was a late piece, first seen in 1973, and apparently based on the relationship between Rex Harrison and his wife Kay Kendall, who was dying of leukaemia. Amazingly Harrison went on to play the character he had inspired on Broadway. The main problem is that...