L-R Vincent Franklin, Eva Pope, Patrick Walshe McBride and Grace Hogg-Robinson
(Picture: Manuel Harlan)A privileged, emotionally thermonuclear family thrash out their differences over Brexit, climate change, and a bucketload of other issues in this confused debut play by Richard Eyre, 79. A superlative director and adapter of others’ work on stage and screen since the 60s, who ran the National Theatre for ten years, Eyre is truly one of the great and the good, a shaper and defender of British culture. Maybe that’s why no-one felt they could suggest a redraft – or a complete rethink - of this sporadically amusing but sprawling mess, which he also directs.
It unfolds in real time in two scenes, before and after the party celebrating the birthday and knighthood of Neil Marriot (Vincent Franklin, his bluff veneer breaking into sweaty desperation from the start). A Lancastrian, self-made pediatrician who voted Leave and pronounced on public health during Covid, Neil’s also a bad husband and father. His son Hugo (Patrick Walshe McBride, overweeningly smarmy) is a gay, right-wing government SPAD who craves his father’s love. Favoured teenage daughter Sarah (Grace Hogg-Robinson, eyes permanently rolling) is a stroppy, Greta Thunberg-worshipping dropout who spurns it.
