Choice: Theatre

Cause Celebre, Hammersmith, London W6 (0181-741 2311)

When Terence Rattigan's final play first appeared in 1977, it seemed like an all-too-late lament for the middle-classes. For most theatregoers, his number was up and nobody really noticed the layers beneath the surface of this courtroom drama about a real sex scandal. Twenty-one years later, when virtually everything the man wrote has been revived, it has taken Neil Bartlett to recognise the untapped potential in this extraordinarily bitter play about sexual double standards, a subject dear to Rattigan's heart given his closet homosexuality. Bartlett exhibited a terrific feel for closet drama in his triumphant revival of Somerset Maugham's colonial lust drama The Letter with Joanna Lumley and the excellent Neil Stacey. Stacey is back again and he and the rest of a really fine cast turn what in other hands could be a creaky, dated drama into an engrossing study of sex and class.