Hansard

by Simon Woods

seen by live streaming from the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 7 November 2019

Simon Godwin directs Alex Jennings as Robin Hesketh (MP and junior Cabinet Minister) and Lindsay Duncan as his wife Diana in an intense drama which begins almost innocuously as social or political comedy set in May 1988, in the week that the Local Government Act including the notorious section 28 was passed into law.

Robin returns to the marital home in the Cotswolds on the Saturday morning after the crucial vote to find Diana still not dressed, and a familiar sparring begins in which it becomes clear that she has nothing but scorn for the role of politician's wife, and, even more difficult for her husband, little sympathy with Tory policy or the general outlook of her husband.  The arguments are presumably well worn in the house, but still engaged on both sides with some degree of passion mixed with the sort of resigned weariness that allows the audience to be amused.

There are signs that more is at stake and that the surface slinging of barbs masks deeper insecurities on Diana's part (it turns out she is a second wife) and a classic detachment from emotional engagement on the part of Robin, who embraces the 'cruel to be kind' approach when, for example, describing two different approaches to parental supervision of a child learning to ride a bike. His apparent complacency in adopting this as a justification for the damaging provisions of section 28 (effectively forbidding teachers from sympathetically dealing with any pupil who might admit to being gay) is obviously deeply wounding to Diana. The repressed tragedy in their marriage may be predicted from the nature of their arguments, but its emotional force is still immensely powerful, not to say upsetting, when the cards are finally on the table.

In the entirely realistic setting of a comfortable Costwold home, designed by Hildegard Bechtler, Alex Jennings and Lindsay Duncan give superb performances of marital bickering in a prolonged conversation which teeters on the edge of facing up to darker memories and fears. The final nakedness of their grief and the damage of their misguided attempts to protect one another is consummately revealed. The play is in the fine tradition of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with frustration at failed ambition replaced by the polarising arguments concerning political and personal responsibility. Barbed comments about Tory complacency and incompetence receive knowing laughs from an audience faced with the unedifying spectacle of contemporary politicians. (Indeed as the audience in the theatre was filing out the cinema relay caught a shout of "Now you know to vote Labour!") These shots are not cheap, but they are, thankfully, not the principal concern of this marvellously presented attempt to set the record straight - the task of Hansard in the political sphere here exemplified by a reckoning long deferred but finally faced in this necessary but horribly painful encounter.