Here’s a theatrical Christmas present of the very loveliest kind. They’ve left it mighty late, but no matter: the Donmar has provided what is in my opinion the second finest drama of the entire year, runner-up only to the might of The Inheritance. Lynn Nottage, that master detailer of the lives of the dispossessed, won her second Pulitzer Prize for Sweat and no wonder. By turns profound, terrifying, earthy and witty, it details the decline of the town, and people, of Reading, Pennsylvania, a once-proud manufacturing hub and furnace of the American Dream.
This might be set in the so-called American ‘rustbelt’ but, goodness, how it speaks so powerfully to our Brexit-riven, food bank-strewn country, frightened as we are of the future, the ‘other’ and the decline of social structures we have always taken for granted. Reading’s particular problems lie with the encroachment of automation and collapse of industry, in a fierce place that used to guarantee blue collar jobs for life, ‘in the mill’ and ‘in the plant’, straight out of high school.
Nottage conducted more than two years of detailed research in the town and how it shows in the exquisitely empathetic detailing of the lives she portrays, the pattern of whose days is hard graft followed by hard drinking. The drama, which shifts back and forth in time between 2000 and 2008, traces the shifting dynamics of a close-knit trio of middle-aged female friends and their two twenty-something sons. When Cynthia (Clare Perkins, like all her cast mates, is outstanding) is suddenly promoted from the factory floor to a management position, the mood darkens and sours. This is a place where any friend who shows the slightest sign of ambition is a threat to the fragile social status quo.
As tensions mount and wallets empty, folks gather in Mike’s Tavern, run by stoical barman Stan (Stuart McQuarrie), who tries to keep his equilibrium while all around are losing theirs. Lynette Linton’s superbly calibrated production excels from start to finish. Outstanding.
Until Jan 26
