The Labour government is on its last legs. The cost of living outstrips earnings. There is even talk of a general strike. But James Graham's latest excursion into politics, after Tory Boyz, is set not today but during the 1978-79 "winter of discontent" and uses a Hull working-class family as a microcosm of a fractious nation. I get the point, but can't help feeling that Graham's quarrelling Yorkists have to bear too much symbolic weight.
Clearly, the problem with the family is an inability to face reality. Dad, a staunch socialist and road haulage veteran, can't face up to his wife's terminal illness. His son Jim, possibly named in acknowledgment of prime minister Callaghan, is a born vacillator unable to confront the tyrannical patriarch with the news that his grandson, Mark, is not a factory worker but a student. Meanwhile Jim's wife, an NHS nurse, copes with the domestic chaos without being able to change entrenched attitudes.
Using a single family to embody the state of the nation is a tricky business. You feel this group is so sorely divided it would have had problems at any time; and it is never clear why the mutinous Mark's educational aspirations have to be kept such a dark secret. But, even if the parallels with national politics seem forced, Kate Wasserberg's production builds up a head of steam as a Storey-like domestic drama. William Maxwell and Colette Kelly, as the oldsters, touchingly break out of the time-frame to remind us of their youthful aspirations as romantic vocalists. Barry Aird as the tongue-tied Jim and Steven Webb as his intransigent son suggest a buried familial bond. But the best performance comes from Kazia Pelka as the resentful nurse reminding us that Hull hath no fury like a woman scorned.
