Royal Court, London
3rd July, 2019
“Ethically, politically, pragmatically or
personally?”
When someone next asks me “What do you
do with a Drama degree?”, I will respond with the above question.
On the blurb of the text for the end of history…, and in the
publicity leading up to the production, much emphasis has been given to the
1997 setting and to Sal and David’s ‘leftist ideals’. This immediately gives us
an impression of what to expect: New Labour, Labour of Love, possibly set in the lead up to or immediate aftermath
of the election. But, like with Thorne’s more overtly titled 2nd May 1997 (2009), to
second guess what the play is going to be would be to falsely label it as more
obvious than it is. In fact, the play has three time settings: 1997, 2007 and
2017. The earliest setting is actually in November and sees Sal turn off the
radio in worry when Blair’s name is mentioned.
This first act is definitely the
funniest. Sal and David have got their three kids back home for dinner. The actual
dinner isn’t the main event, and going by what we see and hear of Sal’s cooking
it could be a write-off. Their youngest son is in detention, something they’ve
encouraged to help him grow out of his experimentation with drugs. Their
daughter Polly is back from Cambridge, still holding a grudge at why dad left
her so quickly after dropping her off and beginning to feel inferior among the
Cambridge elite. Their eldest son Carl is also coming home from uni, bringing
his girlfriend Harriet to meet Sal and David for the first time. Harriet’s from
a well-off family, much to the fascination of Sal: ‘How does someone own
service stations… But do you own the – the petrol station… I don’t know, Little
Chef?’ In fact, I would say it bemuses, even annoys Sal and David that Carl’s
brought someone into the house who doesn’t have much of an interest in what her
family does.
‘David and I have always made the kids take an interest’. Sal, page
17, the end of history…
In this scene, with all its humour and
Thorne’s brio at creating and showing us (in such a short space of time) a fully
believable and detailed family with a sense of their history and problems and
where they are in the world and in their individual lives, I think this above line
is crucial. David and Sal have brought up their kids to encourage them to be
the best they can be; being inquisitive and keen to learn is a vital part of
that. Books, among them Seamus Heaney poetry, are stacked around the room.
There’s a phrenology head. The text also specifies that there are ‘artefacts
from Sierra Leone, Hong Kong and Indonesia’ and the ‘odd interesting ripped-out
article from a newspaper’ around the room. Two of their children, hopefully the
third soon, are at university. This isn’t Reece Witherspoon in Big Little Lies yelling at her daughter that
she must go to college, an education for the sake of credit and enabling a better
position in the jobs market. Sal and David believe in education, and the good
that it can do. They have debates around the table, quiz their children on famous
quotes, make intellectual jokes. It’s entrenched in them that they believe in
their children, their values, and that they will make good. Not just good for
themselves, but for the world.
‘The
challenge is how. The answer is people. The future is people, the liberation of
human potential, not just as workers but as citizens’. Tony Blair,
1999.
They’ve lived through these values
their whole lives and still live by them in each of the three settings. How
these values conflict with their children, who by 2007 are largely leading their
own lives and possibly harbouring different political views, is what creates drama,
something greatly realised by John Tiffany and the cast. Polly is at the start
of a potentially lucrative career, Carl is trying to climb the ladder of
Harriet’s (they’re just about together) family business, and Tom is jobless and
still living at home. The occasion this time is another family meal. Sal and
David have news they want to share, Polly has phoned for a Chinese whilst mum
and dad are at a petition, but Harriet ends up having cheese on toast because
of her MSG allergy (it’s a mountain of cheese that we see – it doesn’t actually
get cooked – Harriet’s the only one who eats some of the Chinese). The news is
that Sal and David are not leaving them any of their money in their will, choosing
to instead donate it in small parts to charities and the Labour Party. Their
argument is strong: they don’t believe in inherited wealth, it only makes the
rich richer and the poor no better off, plus the fact they don’t want to leave
any of their problems behind. But it doesn’t go down well, especially because
of Harriet’s presence in the room. But it’s Laurie Davidson’s reaction as Tom that’s
the most interesting. Before bolting himself in the downstairs loo and
attempting suicide, he’s at the back of the group most distant to Sal and David,
staring into space. You can see his thought process of what this will mean for
him. We’ve already seen that he’s not academic, struggling, not a part of the same
jokes and references that the others share. For him, this conversely might make
him feel like he now has to compete to be conventionally (financially) successful,
something which his parents have never pushed onto them. But their reasoning is
believable and noble. They do believe in their children, and I think that in
performance there was something quite profound and moving about that.
"Fail to develop the talents of any one person, we fail Britain. Talent
is 21st century wealth". Tony Blair, 1999
If anything bugged me about this,
it’s that I couldn’t believe it. Maybe because I didn’t recognise my own upbringing
or family in the play, maybe because I’m not as politically active as Sal and
David, maybe because it can be hard to take something so noble and selfless (although
whether it is selfless or not I suppose is another argument) seriously. But in
the third act, the decision did make sense. In 2017, the family are preparing
for Sal’s funeral. Most of the scene is made up of David’s eulogy for his wife.
We hear her whole life, about her upbringing and career and politics and even
time spent in prison. She’d lived her life by her politics and however futile
one person’s efforts makes to the bigger political game, it suddenly all made
sense.
Tiffany’s production transitions between
scenes by the cast ripping off calendar dates between small vignettes of them
living their lives in that time, all accompanied by an instrumental version of
Imogen Heap’s The Quiet (great
choice, it is quietly cinematic and suggests movement). Kate O’Flynn transforms
from awkward, nasally young adult who absorbs and share’s her parents’
intellect and political leanings to working her way through life and experiencing
her own compromises. But it’s Lesley Sharp who has gone the furthest to take
her character off the page and into a rhythm where it’s simply like she’s just
being the character: her nervous energy and oversharing, her small winces when
she realises she’s overdone it, her belief in people to bring about change,
however seemingly small. What’s so great about Thorne’s play (as well as his
consistently interesting use of stage directions) is that it has made me pause
to think but is all wrapped up in this absorbing family comedy.
the end of
history… plays at the Royal Court until 10th August, 2019
 |
| David Morrissey and Lesley Sharp in the end of history... Credit: Johan Persson |
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