A well-spent lockdown?
Just back from The Snail House at the Hampstead - Richard Eyre’s first full play, written, and quite obviously, during lockdown, which he also directs.
A successful paediatrician, who has been a Covid government adviser, his SPAD son, his beleaguered wife, his incredibly annoying right-on woke teenage drop-out daughter all meet in a posh school hired for a dinner-dance (20 at the dinner, 80 at the dance) to celebrate his birthday and recent knighthood. Three members of the catering team are preparing the tables and the party. Nobody gets on (really), the doctor and his daughter least of all, both absolutely convinced of the rightness (or leftness) of their opinions.
Are the doctor’s exclamations of love and concern for his daughter about her needs, or his? Will the daughter give a speech for her father’s celebration? Will a strange link with the catering manager throw light or confusion on events? Will the action we see sitting outside the dinner and dance (the latter going on off-stage) engage or illuminate?
There is, probably, an underlying message (that opinions may differ, but you get nowhere if you don’t accept this as being a viable option). Unfortunately, to make the characters interesting, in such a truncated time frame, they have to be over the top – such that in the end everyone’s performance is dialled up to 11.
There is, I think, a quite good play lurking somewhere under the surface (and if performances weren’t dialled up to 11 the cast would be honouring their very real skills more) but as it stands neither the characters nor the circumstances are sufficiently coherent to allow the argument within the play to convince. These are not real people but stereotypes (and often annoying stereotypes) arguing and debating.