the end of history - Royal Court Theatre

[NeilVHughes]

Cast announced:

David Morrissey
Lesley Sharp
Kate O’Flynn
Zoe Boyle
Laurie Davidson
Sam Swainsbury


Newbury, 1997. Sal is attempting to cook dinner for the family. She and husband David have pulled off a coup and gathered their brood back home for the weekend. Eldest son Carl is bringing his new girlfriend to meet everyone for the first time; middle daughter Polly is back from Cambridge University for the occasion; and youngest Tom will hopefully make it out of detention in time for dinner.

Sal and David would rather feed their kids with leftist ideals and welfarism than fancy cuisine. When you’ve named each of your offspring after your socialist heroes, you’ve given them a lot to live up to…

[Rory]

What a lovely cast!

[Marwood]

Just booked front row for the end of June, mainly because of the presence of Morrissey and Sharp in that cast list: I'm surprised tickets hadn't gone a lot quicker, to be honest.

[peggs]

Darn the court and it's casting that forces me to buy more tickets!

[urbatboy]

Has anyone see this yet? Planning a trip to London and trying to decide if I should add this to the roster! Thanks!!

[showgirl]

A little soon as the first preview isn't until Thursday 27. I am seeing it soon after so will post my thoughts but don't expect to be the first.

EDIT:  Royal Court website now says 1 hour 50, no interval - aargh!

[Marwood]

Seeing it on Saturday, I’ll post thoughts after (probably from one of the watering holes in the vicinity of the Square)

[Marwood]

Saw this tonight, I wasn’t that impressed with the first half an hour or so, it felt like a grownup version of Outnumbered with added wanking jokes, but it turned into something a lot more dignified and impressive by the end - David Morrissey in particular was excellent.

I’m not sure the running through in one go without any intervals did this any favours, apart from Morrissey getting a grey rinse in his hair there was nothing to suggest 20 years had passed beyond the calendars by the door being changed: I think maybe it would have benefitted with at least one proper pause.

I’ll probably come back to this thread when I’ve had time to process this, and see what other people thought, but I think it’s worth checking out.

[Deleted]

I want to say it was like Love Love Love and Tribes had a baby, except such a description probably oversells it. I definitely came away feeling like I hadn't seen anything original, and I don't know if it even had a point? The terrific cast meant it was far from a wasted evening, but they deserve better material and my opinion of Jack Thorne as a writer is not particularly favourable right now.

[showgirl]

I was also there tonight and underwhelmed but at the end the audience seemed very enthusiastic. Agree with wondering what the point was and though I haven't seen Outnumbered or Tribes, I did see Love, Love, Love and thought that was vastly over-rated.

Edit:  just didn't strike me as a Royal Court-type play; maybe not even something any major theatre should be staging, or certainly not in the main space.

[hedda4897]

I had been thinking of booking tickets for this one, but reading this I don’t think I will bother now.

[Rory]

I've booked for it and your heart always sinks slightly when the feedback suggests a weak script. There is more positive feedback on Twitter so don't give up all hope on it just yet!

[Stephen]

If it helps at all I’m at the complete other end of opinion for this. I thought that it was excellent. Funny, nicely paced and then heartbreaking.

[Rory]

Jun 30, 2019 10:15:36 GMT Stephen said:

If it helps at all I’m at the complete other end of opinion for this. I thought that it was excellent. Funny, nicely paced and then heartbreaking.

Glad to hear Stephen. Personally I'm very much looking forward to it. It has a very enticing cast.

[Rory]

[showgirl]

Jun 30, 2019 7:33:54 GMT Rory said:

I've booked for it and your heart always sinks slightly when the feedback suggests a weak script. There is more positive feedback on Twitter so don't give up all hope on it just yet!

It's not bad, just unmemorable and, compared to the type of work normally seen at the RC, made me wonder not only what the point of the play was, but why this theatre had programmed it.  I suppose I'm used to seeing there (and at comparable London venues) plays about various "isms" and issues, and this seemed not only to lack those but to fail to offer instead any other compelling merits, eg an exceptional version or ground-breaking variant of the standard family saga.  Thinking back to the previous production, White Pearl, you can see what I mean.

[Steve]

I think it's wonderfully entertaining, and somewhat moving too, with great performances, but it isn't a classic political work destined to be remembered, primarily because it's more like a series of skits, than skillfully focused. I had great fun notwithstanding.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Unlike Bartlett's "Love Love Love," which had a laser-like 'right-wing' focus on taking down progressivism, this is a genuine 'left-wing' show, which addresses the difficulties of being progressive, and the difficulties of being the children of progressives, while affirming those underlying progressive values.

What this work most resembles is an updated version Arnold Wesker's "Chicken Soup with Barley," in that it follows a left-wing family over 20 years of political drift (1997 - 2017) exactly as Wesker's play did (1936 - 1956).

It is funnier than Wesker's play, as it is informed by skittish comic mischief from first to last, which is also why it is less successful as a whole than Wesker's play, lacking that play's focus. For instance, I laughed like a drain at an elongated skit about male and female naked selfies, performed masterfully by a precisely nasal, yet lazily sardonic Kate O'Flynn.

In the casting, there is a nod to Flynn's previous National Theatre project, "A Taste of Honey," as again she finds her whole personality encroached upon and defined by an overweening mother, again played by Lesley Sharp, again on top ditzy comic form, but this time informed by greater wellsprings of genuine love and affection. For me, it's O'Flynn and Sharp who bring the most laughs, though all the excellent actors get their moments.

As Marwood said, Morrissey's principal moment comes toward the end, when he is tasked with pretending that all this isn't light comedy, and delivers us a dominating dose of Weskerian progressively political punch. Like in the Wesker play, Morrissey's patriarch walks in his wife's political shadow, but not because he is tragically weak and unprincipled (as in the Wesker) but because he is humorously strong and over-principled. This once again tends towards making this a comic entertainment (and Morrissey is a natural bombastic comedian, as he showed us in Hangmen), rather than a state of the nation play.

Still, the State of the Nation is very much under consideration if only because this show takes us from Blair to Brexit, and while it exposes life's endless compromises, it nonetheless makes a strong case for ever-trying to revive the ever-flailing corpse of progressivism.

I enjoyed the whole cast, and outside of the three principals above, I especially Laurie Davidson's weak young amiable drug-addled sibling, whose role seemed somewhat informed by a very similar character played at the National by Rory Kinnear in "Last of the Haussmans," another State of the Nation play.

This play may only be a blip in the history of political plays, rather than the "end of history" promised, but I found it the funniest and most entertaining of these types of shows, despite not being the most impactful.

4 stars from me.

[Marwood]

I think it’s main problem was that it was too ambitious- trying to fit 20 years of a fair sized families lives into less than 2 hours, we got a few minor comments on Blair and Brown, and a couple of mentions of Greenham but that was pretty much it, with no mention of Corbyn, and characters just disappeared (I don’t want to spoil it for anyone yet to see it but the events in the final act aren’t satisfactorily explained)

I got the impression that Jack Thorne went to the Royal Court, told them he was going to write a play about 20 years in the life of a left leaning middle class family and they just said ‘great’ and wrote him a blank cheque without asking him to go into further details.

[showgirl]

The Stage sums it up as "absorbing but aimless", which was my impression. I was interested to read the Guardian interview with Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, as this made clear what the writer intended but I don't think he achieved it.

[lonlad]

Saw it last night and it's pretty feeble - and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The dramatic structure is so awkward that Thorne has to kill off a major character in order to then tell us about that person - and then what we are told doesn't begin to square with what we have seen. The acting isn't especially good, though Morrissey ages well and Laurie Davidson has a great stage voice -- like Luke Thallon, a young actor who seems a natural stage animal.

[samuelwhiskers]

Jul 2, 2019 19:59:13 GMT Marwood said:

I think it’s main problem was that it was too ambitious- trying to fit 20 years of a fair sized families lives into less than 2 hours, we got a few minor comments on Blair and Brown, and a couple of mentions of Greenham but that was pretty much it, with no mention of Corbyn, and characters just disappeared (I don’t want to spoil it for anyone yet to see it but the events in the final act aren’t satisfactorily explained)

I got the impression that Jack Thorne went to the Royal Court, told them he was going to write a play about 20 years in the life of a left leaning middle class family and they just said ‘great’ and wrote him a blank cheque without asking him to go into further details.

That’s basically how the Court works if you’re high profile enough. They believe in “trusting writers” which is... lovely but at least in some cases equates to “no notes, whatever draft you give us is what’ll get put on stage.”

[lonlad]

3 stars more or less across the board tho' none of the broadsheets seem yet to have weighed in.

[andrew]

Jul 2, 2019 19:59:13 GMT Marwood said:

I think it’s main problem was that it was too ambitious- trying to fit 20 years of a fair sized families lives into less than 2 hours, we got a few minor comments on Blair and Brown, and a couple of mentions of Greenham but that was pretty much it, with no mention of Corbyn, and characters just disappeared (I don’t want to spoil it for anyone yet to see it but the events in the final act aren’t satisfactorily explained)

I got the impression that Jack Thorne went to the Royal Court, told them he was going to write a play about 20 years in the life of a left leaning middle class family and they just said ‘great’ and wrote him a blank cheque without asking him to go into further details.

This comment completely reflects what me and my fellow attendees were talking about in the pub afterwards. Rarely do I ever suggest a play should be longer than it is, but I felt like we didn't spend enough time with the family, on the politics, on the events of their lives, to really feel much at the end of the play. You neither get a satisfying emotional conclusion nor a political one, and it just ends up feeling a bit empty as you walk out.

[NeilVHughes]

Found the politics to be a differentiator rather than the theme of the play, for me it was all about our relationship with our parents.

The closing scene had me in bits as I reflected on my own parents and our strained relationship and the foundation I was provided despite my best efforts to f*** it up and my estrangement which cannot ever be resolved now both are dead.

Will stay with me for a long time and for personal impact one of the best plays I have seen.

[Rory]

That's a very moving post @neilvhughes. Hope you're ok.