Never So Good - TNT

Socialist playwright Howard Brenton's unexpectedly sympathetic account of "Supermac" — Conservative Prime Minister (1957-1963) Harold Macmillan — reaches back even further than the four decades of his political career to touch on the suspicion of a schoolboy affair at Eton and dramatise his courage in World War I. He shows Macmillan as a shrewd politician and intelligent negotiator who, by the time the Profumo scandal forced him from office, found himself way out of step with Britain in the swinging '60s. Jeremy Irons conveys the isolated, work-driven diffidence of the older Macmillan, diplomatically turning a blind eye to his wife's lifelong affair, while his younger self (Pip Carter in military uniform) doggedly feeds his insecurities from the sidelines in this ambitious portrayal of a gentleman from another era.
Lyttelton at the National South Bank, SE1 (020-7452 3000) Until August 14. £41-£10