The title Hansard might suggest the dryasdust transcript of a parliamentary debate, but the debate in Simon Wood’s play is more intimate and explosive; the funny and angry record of a decaying marriage and a painful family secret set against the politics of late 1980s Britain.
This is an extraordinary play: ninety very funny but increasingly emotionally-charged minutes in which the actors are onstage the whole time; bickering, squabbling, criticizing, arguing, amongst the psychic ruins and coffee cups of a marriage - building up to an ending that is unexpected and overwhelmingly poignant, and which asks us to re-evaluate what has come before.
Barry Park's production for Garrick Theatre features the almost unrecognisably smooth-cheeked Grant Malcolm as a Tory minister in the later years of Margaret Thatcher's leadership (no member of the Iron Lady's all-male cabinet would have been permitted facial hair, nor is it likely that any of them would have chosen to cultivate such a leftist affectation even if allowed) and Suzannah Churchman as his disaffected wife, alone with her Mother's Ruin in a country house in the Cotswolds.
Suzannah Churchman as Diana gives a powerful and combative performance, with everything on display. She is certainly not a victim in the conventional sense. When towards the end of the play mascara is running over her cheeks (from what I assume must be actual tears) the catharsis is real.
Grant Malcolm balances her as a constrained and entitled product of the English Public School system - but a man capable of standing up for himself and defending his principles. He is no glib Tory monster, and his motivations become more understandable as the play progresses. The few moments when his emotions break out are the more powerful for their abruptness and how quickly they are bottled up.
Barry Park's direction is seamless. It effortlessly brings out the play's contemporary resonances.
The play's plot turns on a notorious piece of 1988 UK legislation, Section 28, which was an attempt to make illegal any teaching that deviated from traditional conservative views of marriage and sexuality. This links the play to a remarkable sequence of plays that Barry has directed over the last five years. Taken together they represent a sort of informal historical pageant that covers the development of modern sexual attitudes - the early sixties (The York Realist); the late sixties (The Boys in the Band); the early eighties (The Normal Heart); the late eighties (Lisbon Traviata & Hansard); the nineties (Beautiful Thing). And that's not to mention adjacent plays from earlier periods by Coward and Rattigan. It has been a pleasure to watch this sequence play out, and I am sure more is to come. Garrick Theatre is to be commended for supporting challenging plays like these.
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