The Deep Blue Sea, one of the finest post-war plays in the English language, finished its brief run at Brighton's lovely Theatre Royal last week.

With Harriet Walter and Roger Lloyd-Pack leading a top-flight cast, this production of Rattigan's great drama showed English theatre at its dazzling best.

And yet the play was performed to a half-full house, with row after row of empty seats on a Friday night in a city that - as pundits and promoters rarely tire of reminding us - is renowned for embracing the arts.

I don't think we can blame the Theatre Royal management, which has delivered an imaginative, diverse and mature Autumn season.

There was no shortage of posters around the city and the show has deservedly attracted outstanding reviews on its tour.

No, I fear the malaise goes much deeper than that.

As I left the auditorium and passed one packed pub and restaurant after another, I wondered if, along with watching great drama, I was also witnessing the irreversible decline of provincial British theatre.

Terence Rattigan, who with other theatrical luminaries made his home in Brighton, may be unfashionable in these Pop Idol/Big Brother obsessed times but it saddens me that more people did not make the effort to support a fine production such as this.

It's not just the Deep Blue Sea that has suffered from subdued attendance figures.

An actress friend of mine remarked that on the night she went to see the recent production of Vincent In Brixton, hot from Broadway and the West End with the original cast, there was an embarrassing number of unsold seats.

I know that, compared to the cinema for example, the theatre is not a cheap night out.

But for the price of an indifferent meal for two, it is possible to enjoy peerless drama on our own doorstep.

I hope more people will support their local theatre in the future.

Otherwise loss-making managements will no longer be able to stage such timeless masterpieces.

-David Andrews, Brighton