COUGAR CHAOS
The Greeks simply go on giving. Author-director Simon Stone’s play, set immediately amid the upper-middle courses of Holland Park and second-home Suffolk, credit itself modestly as “after Euripides, Seneca and Racine”. Ah, right here it comes once more; two thousand years of blokes worrying concerning the women working amok when not stored below correct male management: murderous Medea, uncooperative Antigone, and on this case Phaedra falling in love together with her stepson. Mr Stone has additionally defined that he has a fantastic curiosity in menopause and its emotional trials, and it’s fairly clear from the beginning that our heroine is ripe for this intriguingly modern hassle.
Janet McTeer performs Helen, a shadow cupboard minister, with costly blonde hair and a symmetrical household. The opening scene – it’s in yet one more revolving glass fishtank, by the best way – sketches them. There’s Declan, an entitled teen from hell who jumps on the luxury white couch in his trainers and tells everybody to fuck off; there’s grownup Isolde who’s been failing to conceive together with her moist accomplice Eric, however fundraises for an NGO and is just too socially acutely aware to do IVF. Paul Chahidi is the Iranian-born, tolerantly home paterfamilias. Chahidi, thank God, may be very humorous and credible. When Birmingham is talked about he patronizingly gushes “good city!”however requested has he really been there says sure, er, no, it will need to have been Bristol… Good.
The household speak directly, naturalistically so little sense arises for some time besides a touch that they’re all very preoccupied with intercourse. Into their midst comes Sofiane, the son of Helen’s old flame in her wild Morocco section with wealthy Oxford mates: he was a dissident artist and naturally Sofiane seems to be similar to him so Helen (ooh, we menopausal menaces!) instantly wriggles and flirts like an adolescent. Properly, Assaaad Bouab from Paris is past irresistible. His father Achraf way back died in what Helen romantically likes to narrate as a crash brought on by the key police slicing his brakes, however which – within the first correctly dramatic second – Sofiane reveals was extra to do with the drugging and consuming into which she, a carefree prosperous Western hippie, led a good man. He was simply 9 when she took him off his actual household, as soon as Sofiane noticed them in congress whereas his mom wept. Clearly his arrival quickly results in a steamy embrace with Madam Minister in a variety of units the glass field magically comprises , notably a ground mattress in an unoccupied ?Birmingham workplace block the place one in every of his associates does safety. It additionally comprises (high marks to the stage crew) some breast-high reeds in Suffolk the place the household bicker a bit extra, Isolde and Eric break up, and Helen confides to a weary MP pal that this new ardour makes her physique really feel alive and it’s without end.
Sadly Sofiane’s is much less decided, and when Isolde confronts him concerning the affair – guess what, very quickly there’s extra work for the Intimacy Co-Ordinator!. This all occurs in brief chopped scenes between deep blackouts and bursts of dramatic exotic-tribal-sacred rating by Stefan Gregory.
I used to be a bit jaded by the interval, frankly: too many individuals shouting “It’s difficult” when really it isn’t: feels extra like each confessional-cougar function about How My Youthful Lover Gave Me Again Myself, crossed with BBC4 Hotter Than My Daughter. They’re all simply too shallow to be Greek, or tragic, or something however mildly satirically fascinating and well-acted (Mackenzie Davis as Isolde, an expert debut, deserves credit score for making her as actual because the script permits. I even believed the bit about being body-shamed by a German boy on the seaside when she was twelve).
However by no means worry. The second half brightens up no finish, with Helen’s restaurant birthday celebration two months on. It begins together with her pal telling her she’s a self centred bitch, and as Sufian and Isolde arrive collectively and Hugo seems each extra drunk and fewer tolerant than common (I do love Paul Chahidi!) , it descends right into a comedy of unwelcome revelations. Good enjoyable, slightly as if Alan Ayckbourn had popped in to provide the creator a hand. A grand second from John MacMillan’s hitherto moist Erik, by the best way, and stalwart work by supernumaries as different restaurant clients politely attempting to disregard the screaming.
I did marvel how the heroically self-absorbed heroine would get spherical to her obligatory Euripidean suicide – as sketched to date, her character appeared extra more likely to write an exculpatory piece within the Guardian and do Strictly – however when the tabloids get her, the Cupboard profession falters since “it doesn’t look good for the occasion’s stance on immigration” if ministers preserve shagging unlawful immigrants. So in a slightly awkwardly tacked- on coda, the good glass fishtank seems to comprise a snowy Moroccan mountainside the place fearful truths about her delusionary romance come clear, albeit in hissed French with surtitles delivered by an entire new character. So finally McTeer is allowed a full mad melodramatic vary. Remembered how good she actually is. Deserves a greater, far much less uneven, play.
Nationaltheatre.org.uk. , to eight april
Score three.
