Recently, I had begun to have reservations about The Royal Court. After conversations with others who have much more naus than me, I was beginning to worry that as a theatre, it was not the spearhead - the trailblazer - I had always believed it to be. I worried that it produced tickbox issue plays for middle-class audiences for the sake of rhetoric, and for the good of the guffawing man in the back row of the stalls who ‘gets’ the literary references. All I could see in these highly political, provocative plays was catharsis, and any call to arms was rather preaching to the converted.
But on Monday afternoon, after enduring a day with a feeling I can only compare to the grey clouds that have dominated most of this week, I felt I needed something both familiar and refreshing to shift it. In the past, the National Theatre and The Royal Court have been my go-to remedies for the blues so within hours, I had set aside my burgeoning pre-conceptions and was sat in the stalls, waiting to see Hope by Jack Thorne.
Now, in terms of its stance as a Royal Court Play, it was just as I would have expected, complete with guffawing man in the back row. It includes the State-Of-The-Nation conversation that sounds remarkably similar to those slurred across pint glasses when it’s closing time at the pub. It is racially diverse (tick), thwarts the gender stereotype (tick), and hosts accents from across the UK (tick). It also stages a brilliant performance from Jo Eastwood, an actress with Down’s Syndrome. (I should point out - all of these decisions are also justified by the play, it is not just a case of the theatre being radically, wildly, controversially interested in equality.)
The play itself talks about cuts to funding for front line organisations, closing Sure Start centres, care for the elderly and turning off street lighting in areas already deemed unsafe. Cuts are targeted at a largely Bangladeshi area, which the council has apparently (questionably) calculated in correspondence to their data. Jobs are at risk, people’s futures are at risk. We see a man so torn apart by having to make these decisions, so constrained by what is politically or morally right, that he is nearly driven back to alcoholism.
And then we see an older man sit beside a young boy and tell him that life is going to be much worse for his generation, to which the boy retorts that it doesn’t have to be: otherwise, what’s the point of living? Through him, we are inspired to feel hope for the next generation, and the generations thereafter. We are invited to dream that perhaps they will look after our world and our society better than we have.
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| Hope by Jack Thorne at the Royal Court Theatre |
The story is great, and moves swiftly and engagingly forwards with some really fantastic performances. Tom Scutt has of course done a great job on the design, to the extent that I thought “Eugh, what’s with the set? It looks like a really drab village hall”, which I presume was absolutely the intention.
Furthermore, yes, it is cathartic, and I feel no differently about the issues presented than I did before I saw the play. But what is significant is that I feel riled by them again, which is a feeling that is otherwise too easily forgotten. Beyond the theatre, beyond the meetings with the local councillors, beyond writing the letter to your local MP and signing the petition to keep the library open/save the arts centre, we bear those feelings alone. What this play, and what the Royal Court tells us through its The Big Idea discussions, video collaborations with the Guardian and by programming plays such as this one, is that we are not alone. More than that, if you have made it to the end of the play without walking out (I can’t be sure, but I think a few did), then you are more than likely surrounded by hundreds of others who feel like you. And that is what matters.
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By the end of the night, my blue feeling had shifted. It may have been knocked out of me by squeezing passed Damien Lewis in the bar, but I would like to think that aid came mainly from my experience in the auditorium and of the play itself. I think it instilled in me the sense of purpose and responsibility to society which had recently began to slip, particularly after reading an article in the New Statesman noting that younger generations are becoming less and less likely to vote. If they are not engaging with the future of their country, then what hope is there left?
And that’s just it. This play reminded me to look to the future of this country with hope, not apathy or disassociation. Of course a play isn’t going to change the world on its own, and we can only hope that those who are prone to apathy and disassociation stumble into the theatre by happy accident, or at least listen to someone who has. One evening at the theatre won’t change our government overnight, and neither is it trying to, and this is what I had forgotten. What this play - this theatre - reminds us of is that it is only by coming together that we can dare to hope, and actively pursue a clearer future.
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Written by Jack Thorne
Directed by John Tiffany
Designed by Tom Scutt
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