Jack Thorne is a juggler, combining a prolific career as a playwright with bold work on TV dramas such as Skins and The Virtues. This new political piece reunites him with John Tiffany, a friend of twenty years with whom he’s collaborated three times before, notably on the blockbuster hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Here they’ve created something far more intimate, shaped by Thorne’s experience of growing up in a household where strong opinions pinged across the kitchen table. But while it’s animated by serious ideas about progressive values and packed with quotable lines, it has a frustrating lack of focus.
Lesley Sharp and David Morrissey play Sal and David, baby boomers who have devoted their lives to left-wing protest. They’re the sort of people who name their children after their political heroes — yet for their daughter Polly (Kate O’Flynn) and sons Tom and Carl (Laurie Davidson and Sam Swainsbury) this passionate commitment is a burden rather than a gift.
The action moves from the election of Tony Blair in 1997, via the end of his premiership in 2007, to the Brexit-clouded malaise of 2017. Tiffany intersperses the scenes with dreamlike dance sequences that suggest the passage of time, and Thorne tracks the dysfunctional family’s fluctuating moods.
At first the play feels like a flimsy comedy of manners, and it takes a while to become more absorbing, peaking when Morrissey delivers a moving speech about the sacrifices involved in sustaining noble ideals. His performance is brooding, and Sharp has a jittery verve. But the relationships between the younger characters don’t mesh convincingly, and Thorne’s script, despite its perceptiveness about the dynamics between parents and their offspring, doesn’t say anything fresh and audacious.
Until Aug 10
