Lovers of good drama and politics junkies should flock to Samuel West's superb revival of Harley Granville Barker's play. Written in 1907 and revised in 1926, it takes its time (just over three hours), but encompasses a vast amount: English smugness and hypocrisy, the intricacies of power and the danger of divorcing campaigning idealism from emotional fulfilment.
Granville Barker's skill lies in his seamless blend of private and public life. His hero, Henry Trebell, is a missionary MP who dreams of disestablishing the Anglican church. Co-opted by the Tories to push through his bill, he finds himself at the centre of a scandal. Trebell casually impregnates a married woman, with whom he has had a loveless affair, leading not only to loss of life but the death of his cherished political baby.
Much the best scene in West's meticulous production is that which shows the Tory grandees struggling to suppress the scandal and rescue the endangered bill. Rarely in English drama do you see the workings of the establishment so nakedly exposed as these beleaguered toffs seek to silence the husband, a former Irish republican, of Trebell's mistress. As you watch Hugh Ross's devious PM trying to reconcile the demands of Patrick Drury as the wronged husband, and Peter Eyre and Richard Cordery as position-striking politicians, you get a sense of life behind normally closed doors, and of the flexibility of English moral values.
Will Keen skillfully conveys the tragedy of Trebell: the sterility of a life in which principles take precedence over people. That is the ultimate waste, and its victims are eloquently represented by Nancy Carroll as his discarded lover and Phoebe Nicholls as his sister. You emerge wrung through from a play that is not only the source of much state-of-the-nation drama but also, I suspect, Granville Barker's own self-indictment.
