Plays about schools often focus on the independent sector. This debut piece by Alex MacKeith deals, however, with the life of a harassed headteacher in a south London primary. Given that MacKeith worked in one after leaving Cambridge, I take the play to be authentic. What makes it good drama is that it deals with the nuts and bolts of a test-driven system, rather than taking refuge in waffly generalities.
MacKeith follows his principled head, Jo, through the course of a working day in which the problems pile up. The big issue is the arrival of the Sats results: these matter hugely because the school can apply for pupil premium awards only if 80% of pupils hit the national average.
But Jo has a lot more to contend with. Much of her time is taken up by Tom, a needy Oxbridge graduate on placement to help raise reading standards. Jo also has to deal with an angry parent whose diabetic daughter has collapsed during a school trip. Even Jo’s assistant, Lara, poses problems, with her reluctance to pursue her teacher training at a school of which her father was once head.
MacKeith overeggs the pudding by additionally having Jo take calls from her ex-partner about an impending divorce. The play also takes time to get to the big showdown between Jo and Tom. When it comes, however, it works beautifully by raising fundamental issues about the national curriculum through specific instances. At first, we tend to think Tom is a breath of fresh air as he explains how he taught Year 6 pupils grammar by deconstructing Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall: he seems to be a primary school equivalent of Alan Bennett’s Hector from The History Boys. But, when he’s rounded on by Jo, we come to see that his supposed inventiveness is failing pupils. However much you may deplore the imposed curriculum, you’ve got, as Jo explains, “to tick the boxes”.
MacKeith’s sympathy clearly lies with teachers who work a 65-hour week to make an imperfect system work. Because his play is so detailed, it also acts as a metaphor for other hard-pressed professions, such as nursing or social care. The play is much aided by an assured production by Charlie Parham for a company called antic/face, who kicked off in 2014 with a bold staging of Hippolytos at the V&A.
Ann Ogbomo excellently shows Jo struggling to maintain her composure under the pressure of the day’s events. Oliver Dench as the naively well-intentioned Tom, Fola Evans-Akingbola as the aspirational Lara, and Kevin Howarth as a hostile parent provide staunch support.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising,” said the critic Cyril Connolly. But if I say that MacKeith has real promise, it is because he has understood that plays work best when they provide concrete evidence from which audiences can draw their own conclusions.
• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 25 February. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
