Should we all have to retire at 65? And what are the pros and cons of life under Labour? These are the questions that propel JB Priestley's play, which, although written in the cruel winter of 1947, is the most topical play on the London stage. And I can't imagine it being better done than in Christopher Morahan's superbly acted revival.
As in An Inspector Calls, Priestley uses a family reunion to examine the state of the nation. Here the Linden clan gather in provincial Burmanley to celebrate their history professor father's 65th birthday. The only problem is the university's new-broom vice-chancellor wants Linden out forthwith. And the family itself divides along political lines. Linden's put-upon wife, super-spiv son and expatriate daughter all press him to opt for retirement. But his other daughters - a dedicated NHS doctor and a 17-year-old cello-playing student - urge him to fight on.
What is impressive is how much of Attlee's Britain - and, to some extent, our own - Priestley puts on stage. Education is seen as a battleground between theorists and practitioners. Priestley also offers us competing visions of the postwar world. Linden himself, using the Elgar Cello Concerto as a symbol of lost Edwardian values, sees the unions and civil service as indifferent to art and culture. In the end, however, Linden vehemently argues that Labour offers the only chance for peaceful revolution in modern history.
Priestley emerges as an unsentimental utopian. He also moves one deeply through his portrait of a man battling to save his career. Oliver Ford Davies is quite superb as Linden: ironic, obdurate, humane but given to flashes of rage in his belief in his continuing right to teach. This is an evocative evening in which even the jaunty radio signature tunes and dog-eared Penguins take us back to a world of beleaguered, postwar optimism.
· Until March 25. Box office: 020-8940 3633.
