When this was announced at the Menier Chocolate Factory I looked at it because it would be interesting to see Anthony Stewart Head on stage. However the show’s plot (in 1944 a left-wing, 17 year old returns home from abroad to find his mother, Olivia, has taken up with a right-wing cabinet minister) seemed fun but not enough to entice me at the time, and all the good seats had sold.

Now approaching the end of its run following a transfer to the Apollo, we were able to snag some good seats to catch it on a Thursday evening. It turns out this is something of a combination of two plays, Less Than Kind and Love In Idleness. Both written by Terence Rattigan, the second based on the first but with much reduced politics to be more audience friendly.

First and foremost, the play was fun, pretty gentle, and a nice way to pass the time. The discussions on the politics of the time did not go deep enough to really bite, and it did not use them to hold a message for the modern era.

Source – telegraph.co.uk

What surprised me the most was that the setup was the opposite to my expectations. From the plot description I had expected that the boy was shocked at the pompous Conservative, and we’d see ASH at his pompous best with only the son, Michael, able to see how awful he was. However the opening scene sets its stall – Sir John and Olivia are deeply in love, both very rational people, and very happy despite her trying times arranging a dinner party and his planning a new tank.

Michael therefore comes in as antagonist, breaking this union, bringing irrationality and drama. Smartly the play calls out how alike this is to Hamlet, allowing ASH to quote Shakespeare in the most over the top way since Keanu Reeves. However this is a play of its time and must come to a happy end, using some quick reversals of solemn oaths and mindsets to wrap up.

The performances were solid. Michael, was played by Edward Bluemel as a mix between Harry Enfield’s Kevin and an intellectual wannabe. ASH did well as a mature statesman, the Canadian accent he was trying for notwithstanding. And Eve Best was superb as the mother Olivia, going from the socialite to doting mother and back in seconds.

Source – theartsdesk.com

I was left with questions about the writing – why was Sir John Canadian (this review hints that it was written that way for the first star)? Why was the boy 17 coming from evacuation rather than 22 coming from studies? The direction and staging from Trevor Nunn could not be questioned. The cast flowed around the stage sitting, leaning, and lounging on every piece of furniture. They never felt staged though, and the physicality of the affair and the mother-son relationship allowed them moments of extreme closeness and distance.

So this was not the most cutting or edgy of plays to be on the West End, or even at the Apollo. But it was a good bit of fun, impressively played, and has made me want to read more on the two plays to understand which of each I enjoyed the most.