In Let the Right One In, the writer Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany created one of the most imaginative shows of the last five years. Now they have made one of the dullest.
Of course, a summary of almost any show can make it sound tedious. Three and a half hours about someone not being able to make up his mind is not how audiences usually experience Hamlet. Yet Hope never really gets beyond a synopsis of its subject: the pain of a local Labour council setting its budget amid cuts and austerity. Who then – bring on a crescendo of notes – refuse, as a gesture of defiance, to set one.
I agree with all its aspirations – it is a truly good-hearted play – but was not once taken by surprise. There is no new data nor any real humanising of old truths.
A skinny domestic subplot – involving an anguished councillor’s ex-wife and his on-off relationship with a fellow worker – does not illuminate the main action. The two plots lie side by side like an estranged couple in a marital bed.
There are – how could there not be from such a gifted team? – glimmers among the general dimness. Tom Scutt’s design is all too authentically municipal, with light battling through high dusty windows. Stella Gonet (as one of the more intriguing characters, the council leader) stalks with crispness and very good specs-work. There are well-written sprightly exchanges with a precocious teenager, performed with exceptional clarity by Tommy Knight. Yet Hope looks like a Royal Court running after political urgency and failing to catch it.
• Hope is at the Royal Court, London SW1 until 10 January 2015
