Three new plays that recently opened at the National Theatre should appear on your to do list for 2013. Lucy Prebble came to prominence with Enron, in which video projection, geometric lighting, and choreography were blended with naturalistic dialogue to track the mechanisms of the financial scandal surrounding the bankruptcy of the American energy company. Again working with the director Rupert Goold, Prebble employs similar techniques in The Effect to depict a tightly-monitored trial of a new antidepressant in normal volunteers conducted in a pharma company facility. Two subjects, played by Billie Piper and Jonjo O’Neill, are attracted to each other, but are their emotions drug-induced or ‘real’? And who is on placebo, and who is on the active drug? And whose functional MRI scans are we looking at? Do antidepressants work anyway, and what lies beneath the surfaces of the buttoned-down trial monitor and the plausible pharma medic? It’s worth finding out.
Alan Bennett is a real national treasure and his new play People is, as someone sitting behind me pronounced, ‘very Alan Bennett’. It is, as always, engaging, witty, and mischievous in its portrayal of the decay of a stately home and its inhabitants, beautifully played by the wonderful Frances de la Tour and Linda Bassett. De la Tour — Lady Stacpoole — has a gay archdeacon sister who has taken it for granted that the National Trust will rescue the estate, but her ladyship has other ideas, which include using the house as a pornographic film set. There are plenty of memorable dotty moments and some great one-liners, as well as a sustained attack on the National Trust and a very funny scene where ‘Reach for the Thigh’ is shot on a four-poster bed, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it all comes together in the last scenes.
The real treat, which kept me absolutely engaged for 3 hours, is This House by James Graham, which is set in the parliamentary whips’ offices in Westminster in the mid-to late 1970s. The Cottesloe is done out as the House of Commons, and we sat on the opposition front bench. The cast is marvellous and Philip Glenister (yes, he of Ashes to Ashes) as the labour deputy chief whip and Charles Edwards, as his Tory opposite number, are superb throughout, particularly in the very moving ending. The battleground is the rejection of the pairing arrangements for voting in very closely-run debates by the Tories after a probably inadvertent breach of the agreement by the Labour whips. This resulted in MPs on oxygen and with post-operative dressings still in place being hauled in to the House to maximise the vote on key motions. The fast-paced action and riveting dialogue is peppered with famous events — Heseltine swinging the mace, John Stonehouse faking his death, Norman St John Stevas preening and mincing, and that woman from Finchley confounding them all. Kill for a ticket.
Notes
The Effect is at the Cottesloe theatre until 23 February 2013, People is at the Lyttleton theatre until 2 April 2013, and This House is sold out and re-opens at the Olivier theatre on 23 February 2013. All at the National Theatre, South Bank, London.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2013