TNT
Easy, perhaps, for nineteen year olds with a comfortable grant to be seduced by the Beatles’ lyrics into believing that all you need is love.
But times change and in Mike Bartlett’s bitingly funny, hugely watchable three act play (directed by James Grieve), those free spirits of the late 60’s have-it-all generation are still putting themselves first almost half a century later. They suffer in their self-inflicted, discontented way, but the real casualties are their children who, even in their thirties, can’t afford a home of their own.
Victoria Hamilton is on knockout form as Sandra, first seen as a stoned dolly bird student who turns her attentions from Sam Troughton’s solid, straitlaced Henry to his younger Oxford undergrad brother Kenneth (Ben Miles, also excellent), then in 1990 as a forty-something mum of two teenage kids (Claire Foy’s Rose and George Rainsford’s Jamie) and too busy with her own affairs to turn up in time for Rose’s violin concert. The more placid Kenneth can’t even remember how old his daughter actually is.
Fast forward another couple of decades, and Jamie is a disconnected adult more in tune with his iPhone apps than other human beings, and Rose is full of resentment for her baby-boomer parents who, even when retired, refuse to grow old - or to realise that it takes more than self-centred love, love, love to change the world. Go see.
Until 2nd June (£10 - £28) Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS royalcourttheatre.com
No comments:
Post a Comment