People at the National Theatre: Review

Alan Bennett is synonymous with satirical, yet elegiac comedies. Audiences laugh with delight at the well-written and cleverly formulated mockery of a society which they know all too well.

Frances de la Tour as Dorothy lead a highly talented cast of Alan Bennett’s newest addition to his constantly expanding list of hilariously compassionate and wildly enjoyable productions. De la Tour was accompanied by Linda Basset, playing Iris, who stole the show as the eccentric, old companion with whom de la Tour pranced round the stage singing ‘Downtown’, to great comic success. Both characters were played as wild and uninhibited, yet equally fraught with a denial to move on and accept the changing age, perhaps a syndrome that many of us associate an elder generation ‘stuck in its ways’.

Decay is a type of progress.

Dorothy and Iris’s deteriorating stately home in Yorkshire was constructed as a single, grand room onstage, the set littered with dust sheets and discarded objects. They occupied one room and slept in front of electrical heaters on cushions taken from the chairs they sat on throughout the day. They never washed as they didn’t know how to turn on the hot water. Offers to take the house and turn it into a heritage site were quickly and fervently debunked by Dorothy, despite her sister June (Selina Cadell) trying to persuade her that the National Trust’s offer was very attractive.

Dorothy did not want ‘people’ traipsing round her home, Lumsden, and while the National Trust associate assured her that ‘these are not just people,’ and that their ‘membership is made up of self-selecting individuals who appreciate the art and craftsmanship of the past’ Dorothy retorted, ‘and who just want somewhere to go.’ De la Tour brilliantly captures this bitter yet strong-willed character determined not to sell-out to ‘The Trust’.

The gentle mockery of the National Trust, which Dorothy encouraged, played to the expected middle-class and middle-aged audience and the natural association of such an institution – the ‘National Theatre’ – with Britishness. It certainly went down a storm in the Lyttleton auditorium, whose audience recognised themselves in the tourists traipsing round an old pastiche and fictitiously modified stately home for ‘a nice day out’.

Pretend England [is] so decent, so worthy, so dull.

Yearning for excitement, Dorothy opened up the house for an ex-lover (Peter Egan) to shoot a film which turned out to be a somewhat adult production (and which the two companions more than happily played cameo roles in, getting quite giddy with rebellious excitement when they found out what type of film it really was). Of course, the Bishop arrived right on cue, and though predictable, Andy de la Tour delivered fine and surprising, awkward bumbling lines with precise comic timing and without letting the play become slap stick.

From this exciting and risqué episode came the mundane and sensible at the end of the play, which saw the set magnificently restored, from a run down mansion to a pristine house with all its ‘original’ features and ‘character’. Set designer Bob Crowley bestowed his wealth of experience into another fine and ambitious set. The production quality was entirely engaging and naturalistic such that I was utterly convinced that I was looking at a stately home. The decor and design wouldn’t have been out of place within a real National Trust house (perhaps the irony of National Trust’s ‘reality show’ houses was played out here).

Dorothy: “England is not my problem. I will not be metaphorised. This is not Allegory House.”

The two companions became players in their own lives as tourists flooded in to see the mélange of the old and the new, in their show house that has been given artificial idiosyncrasies, which we so unashamedly necessitate and which the only objective of is to create interesting stories for the visitors, where the truth is marginalised.

Bennett has done well to create such an absorbing play out of so thin a topic; it was engaging throughout, and although it did not have the compassionate and heartwarming character developments of The History Boys, Bennett certainly does not undermine himself as a creative and analytical commentator of our times.

A comedy with the highest degree of intelligence, indulgent with provocative fun, People provided thought-provoking theatre which offered an unsettling but humorous truth of British culture.

People was playing at the National Theatre until 15 May but it continues on a tour around the country during Autumn 2013. It comes to the Birmingham Rep Theatre from 3-21 September 2013.