After a faltering first scene or two, Tony Kushner’s new play becomes one of the most absorbing dramas on the London stage. The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, or iHo, is a giant, fiercely argued investigation of American family life and leftwing politics. The title tips its hat to Bernard Shaw. The profession of its paterfamilias – he is a retired longshoreman – nods at Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge. Debates race through the dialogue: forensic, but firmly rooted in character. They touch on Italian anarcho-communists, assisted dying, trade unions, political and personal betrayal, the sexual puritanism of the Communist party. Michael Boyd’s well-paced production rings with the tangled disputatiousness of a family.
It is a lively point of Kushner’s that politics is as much a family legacy as property. Designer Tom Piper hints at this with one of his trademark staircases, which dominates the stage like a coil of DNA. In a strong cast, David Calder and Tamsin Greig are outstanding, fighting for control of themselves and each other.
