Life's a mess, and so is this!
Just back from Manor at the National (Lyttleton). OK – great and imaginative set, and some of the best storm skies I’ve seen on the stage.
Good cast acting well. Some great stage effects. An isolated group of people, in some peril, in a fading Restoration Manor House. Secrets. Tension. Odd sounds from empty rooms. Something supernatural? A sudden death, or was it?
These are the set-ups for a thriller, a black comedy perhaps, something spine chilling and Woman in Black-ish? An Inspector Calls perhaps?
Oh no, it’s a lumpen attack on far right politics. A Fascist leader. A Fascist movement. Think Black Shirts and Mosely – but that was the 1930s and this is the 2020s. And a great deal more is happening now, but this play was written in the Royal Court school of polemics, and before lockdown and some real issues.
Good characters, well they’re going to be gay, of course, the bad ones cis (or incels). The first act has some funny lines, the second less so. Dog whistles blaring so loudly I felt deafened. Great theatre design and good acting being wasted.
I’m not sure being Earnest is actually that important. Or, with this script, convincing.