This timely four-hander explosively explores the pressures of our exam-obsessed education system on young people and their parents. Mark is a bustling politician; the Brexit referendum looms. Charlotte is a high-powered publisher, recovering from cancer, back at work, stressed. Their 18-year-old son Tom has one last A-level to sit: two A*s will win him the place at Cambridge that will bring his parents “peace of mind as to his future”. Frida needs only one A*. Frida has been going out with Tom since she won a scholarship to his expensive school; her single-parent, Portuguese father works night shifts and “doesn’t know that rocket salad with cheese counts as a meal”.
The action accelerates around two questions: when does an advantage become not just unfair, but immoral? What does it mean to “want the best for our kids”?
Jonathan Lewis’s new play is terrific on intergenerational and inter-couple dynamics – the split-second flips between joshing and annoyance, anger and affection, trust and suspicion, love and anxiety. Damian Cruden’s adroit and dynamic direction has an Alan Ayckbourn-like feel for the way farcical incidents add depth to a drama and intensify the rapport between action and audience. His cast is tremendous. Lewis himself plays Mark, alongside real-life partner Imogen Stubbs – grippingly united and torn apart through love of their son. Matt Whitchurch and Robyn Cara movingly express the fragilities of youth asserting itself into adulthood.
• The Be All and End All is at York Theatre Royal until 19 May, then touring
