You
never hear anyone arguing that the conventional nuclear family is an
inherently bad arrangement on the basis that all you ever see of it on
stage or screen or in the news are dysfunctional examples, do you?
Well, then, why make such an argument against (for want of a better
term) alternative lifestyles? To be fair, though, the Haussman family
portrayed here are hardly a ringing advertisement for the hippie
legacy. Whilst mother Judy faces her end, unrepentant of her days with
the Bhagwan or any of it, her children Libby and Nick approach middle
age without ever having found coherent paths for themselves, and now
worry that Judy might be about to sell the family’s incongruous Art
Deco house on the Devon coast out from under them (a wonderful set
design by Vicki Mortimer). Libby’s 15-year-old daughter Summer is being
a difficult teenager, visiting doctor Peter has one eye on Libby and
her curvaceous property inheritance, and neighbour Daniel trains in the
family’s pool and catches the eye of pretty much everyone.
Actor Stephen Beresford’s first play as a writer is a lovely bit of
work. Its comedy is deliciously sardonic, a fine match for the central
trio of actors Julie Walters, Helen McCrory and especially Rory
Kinnear. Beresford doesn’t make the anti-permissiveness argument I
mention above (although all too many spectators will); rather, he
balances the second-act straight-talking scene well between all three,
and sums up the play’s own conclusions in a line of Nick’s: “Nobody’s
to blame for anybody else’s fuck-ups.” The laughs and the more sombre
moments are skilfully blended, and the temptation is resisted to tie
matters up nicely in ribbons at the end.
It feels a little odd for the National Theatre. Director Howard Davies
is one of the National’s stalwarts, and doesn’t shirk here; nor is
there any reason why it shouldn’t stage a new work which has less of a
point to make than much of its repertoire. A generation ago, this sort
of new play would still have had a chance of a West End launch; the
fact that they now need subsidised houses for exposure is an indictment
of the timidity of the commercial sector, not of the South Bank. But
for the NT, these Haussmans are a bit, well, boulevard.
Written for the Financial
Times.