Keeley Hawes makes an impressive return to live theatre in Lucy Kirkwood’s muddled drama set in 1948, which splices the creation of the NHS together with a black-and-white British postwar film romance.
A primetime TV favourite for three decades in Spooks, Line of Duty and The Durrells, Hawes shines here in an altruistic role that could be insipid. And she has a worthy foil in Jack Davenport, playing a wittily jaded movie star. Though I kind of loved the play’s mix of stridency and scattiness, and the way it juxtaposes theatrical and cinematic action, it’s overstuffed, overlong and unfocused.
