Bridge,
London
15th August,
2018
“Caring is about shit”
If
it weren’t for Alan Bennett this blog would not be what it is today. Flashback
five years to an unseasonably warm September afternoon. The tour of People is
playing at Curve and we, the two youngest people in the audience, meet for the
first time. It’s safe to say, then, that Alan Bennett holds a special,
sentimental significance for us, and last week we approached his latest
offering with a not undue sense of nostalgia. While Allelujah! is
by no means vintage Bennett (or Hytner, for that matter), he maintains a hard
edge to his outwardly gentle comedy, and shows he still has the ability to
surprise.
Set
in ‘The Beth’, a small hospital that treats locals ‘from birth to death’, and
focal point of the community, the action takes place in the geriatric ward,
which is the bane of NHS staff and officials nationwide. Elderly patients get
sick. They get better. But they have nowhere to go so can’t be discharged. Thus,
Bennett homes in on the ‘bed-blocking’ crisis seen in many a hospital and, rather typically, he finds the nub of
the matter: an under-resourced NHS reduced to a numbers game of ‘patient
turnover’. Patients
pile up in the hallways as manic doctors compete in a race for the next bed
every time a death occurs in geriatrics, buttering up the matriarchal Sister
Gilchrist (Deborah Findlay) so they can get a head start on their rivals. With
The Beth under threat of closure from the government, manager Salter (Peter
Forbes) has hired in a film crew to record the patients’ views on the hospital,
the hard-working NHS staff, and the joy that the geriatric choir gives them.
Bennett
and Hytner produce touching episodes, from tentative dance routines, to
pitilessly selfish families – latest arrival, the Pudsey Nightingale’s daughter
and son-in-law want assurance that she’ll be kept alive only until they can
fully inherit her property – to dementia-stricken Joe’s (Jeff Rawle) inability
to recognise his son. There’s a touch of gallows humour to these proceedings –
eg. the Pudsey Nightingale has lost all conversational ability, except for her
frequent expulsions of ‘IT’S MY HOUSE!’ at (in)opportune moments – but much of
Bennett’s comedy takes the form of affectionate ribs on aging, small-town
Britain, and generation gaps. Injecting a dose of quaint fantasy, and staying
on just the right side of twee, the patients partake in musical numbers ranging
from ‘A, You’re Adorable’ to ‘Good Golly, Miss Molly’, forming pill-popping
chorus lines and fantasy lindy hops. So, we’re all set for an evening of mildly
political whimsy that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
But
Bennett throws an unexpected curveball. A shock twist at the end of the first
act alters the tone of the piece, and while rather gratuitous, fits the bill
from a plot perspective. The second half whizzes by, perhaps a little too fast
and certain plotlines seem tacked on – Sacha Dhawan’s friendly doctor facing
deportation for failing an English proficiency test feels like an afterthought
(or a plot for another play). An 11th-hour speech of his featuring
what should be a pertinent line – ‘Open your arms England, before it’s too late’
– feels tagged on. This is a pity considering most of Bennett’s plays ( from Forty Years On and People to Enjoy and The History Boys) all feature perceptive
and original readings of England. Dhawan’s speech in Allelujah! is underwhelming by comparison. Furthermore, the
aforementioned twist invokes yet another political jab (I’m trying to keep this
review spoiler free!) and there’s a sense that Bennett is taking wild aim at
anything and everything he can – race, sexuality, ageism, unemployment,
institutionalised abuse, economic cutbacks, the ‘PC brigade’, euthanasia (to
name but a few) – and the result seems unfocused and underfed. While Bennett’s
other plays feature moments of lucid rhetoric that are not only insightful, but
entertaining, Allelujah! fails to reach such intellectual or
emotional heights. Of course I felt sympathy with the characters, but most
remain two-dimensional mouth pieces.
Bennett’s
most successful creations here are the proud, cantankerous, yet endearing Joe,
and the no nonsense, iron-willed Sister Gilchrist. Having more to work with,
Rawle and Findlay are inevitably the stand-outs among the cast. They sink their
teeth into the characters and play off each other splendidly. Elsewhere, a
lycra-clad Samuel Barnett has a pretty thankless role as Joe’s cold, (non)civil
servant son that reluctantly returns to his hometown. Nicola Hughes makes a
warm impression as the enthusiastically naïve Nurse Pinkney, while work
experience teen, Andy (David Moorst) is sullen, contradictory and (it turns
out) pretty nasty. The fact that this character is written and played for
laughs perhaps sums up the sometimes queasy nature of Bennett’s play. I love a
bit of black humour, but Allelujah! isn’t quite funny enough to
pull it off. Compared with McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore –
another pitch dark comedy – which we saw earlier that day, it lacks
the belly laughs required to boost the drama and relieve the tension. This may
sound like I’m criticising Bennett for being too Bennett (too
much whimsy and too many pithy retorts masquerading as character development),
but I think his style would have been better suited had he pared down the plot
slightly and gotten more under the skin of his characters.
By
turns cynical, touching and with a rogue twinkle in its eye, Allelujah! doesn’t
set the stage alight, and as both a black comedy and state-of-the-nation play
it feels underpowered, but Bennett remains a bastion of not just British
playwriting, but Britain as a whole and this peculiar production will remain a
curio in his oeuvre. And
as in The Lady in the Van (from which
the line at the top of this review particularly comes to mind), he provides
much prosaic insight. What’s more, Bennett and Hytner manage
to pull off that most sought-after of coups, a truly bitter-sweet ending, and
rather lovely it is at that.
Allelujah! plays
at the Bridge Theatre until 29th September , 2018.
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Deborah Findlay and Jeff Rawle in Allelujah! Credit: Manuel Harlan |
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