Let us now praise Ian Gelder. This thoughtful, sensitive and above all unshowy character actor is neither the star nor the dramatic linchpin of Jonathan Church’s revival of Racing Demon, but as the most intelligent and aware of an inner-London team of clergy he is the brightest of a particularly bright cast, and well worth a lead mention. But it is only by a nose that he leads the likes of David Haig as a conscientiously woolly vicar whose tenure is under threat from Anthony Calf’s unsympathetic bishop (absence of sympathy being, seriously, one of Calf’s great talents) and Paapa Essiedu as the new curate whose evangelical zeal hardens into zealotry.

Church has built a deserved reputation as a master squarer of theatrical circles between conservative audiences and adventurous programming. He is a natural choice as director of Bath’s summer season, and this (the 1990 first instalment in David Hare’s trilogy about British national institutions) is a characteristic selection as a season opener, containing as it does a certain amount of freight but fundamentally guaranteed not to rock the boat. Surprisingly, however, this may be a rare misstep for Church.

Paradoxically, I think this is in part a function of Hare’s maturity as a playwright. For the majority of the play he deliberately refuses to furnish us with a viewpoint or viewpoint-character to identify with. Haig’s Rev. Lionel Espy seems likeable as a man but every inch the then-current stereotype of noncommittal, ineffectual Anglicanism; Essiedu’s Tony Ferris offers a sincere and at first plausible case for a more evangelical stance. Only late in the second half does Ferris’s spiritual fire become clearly destructive and Espy acquire a backbone in a showdown with His Grace. By then, the silence of an audience paying attention had, I fear, on press night become that of... well, of dutifully listening to a sermon. Indeed, just as I was hatching this thought came the definitive symptom: the first cough from the stalls. It may also partly be bad timing: with Britain’s national polity currently in a comparable mess of directionlessness and self-defeating authoritarianism, this is an evening that offers little respite. Perhaps prayer is the best option after all.

Written for the Financial Times.