the end of history - Royal Court Theatre

I think it's wonderfully entertaining, and somewhat moving too, with great performances, but it isn't a classic political work destined to be remembered, primarily because it's more like a series of skits, than skillfully focused. I had great fun notwithstanding.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Unlike Bartlett's "Love Love Love," which had a laser-like 'right-wing' focus on taking down progressivism, this is a genuine 'left-wing' show, which addresses the difficulties of being progressive, and the difficulties of being the children of progressives, while affirming those underlying progressive values.

What this work most resembles is an updated version Arnold Wesker's "Chicken Soup with Barley," in that it follows a left-wing family over 20 years of political drift (1997 - 2017) exactly as Wesker's play did (1936 - 1956).

It is funnier than Wesker's play, as it is informed by skittish comic mischief from first to last, which is also why it is less successful as a whole than Wesker's play, lacking that play's focus. For instance, I laughed like a drain at an elongated skit about male and female naked selfies, performed masterfully by a precisely nasal, yet lazily sardonic Kate O'Flynn.

In the casting, there is a nod to Flynn's previous National Theatre project, "A Taste of Honey," as again she finds her whole personality encroached upon and defined by an overweening mother, again played by Lesley Sharp, again on top ditzy comic form, but this time informed by greater wellsprings of genuine love and affection. For me, it's O'Flynn and Sharp who bring the most laughs, though all the excellent actors get their moments.

As Marwood said, Morrissey's principal moment comes toward the end, when he is tasked with pretending that all this isn't light comedy, and delivers us a dominating dose of Weskerian progressively political punch. Like in the Wesker play, Morrissey's patriarch walks in his wife's political shadow, but not because he is tragically weak and unprincipled (as in the Wesker) but because he is humorously strong and over-principled. This once again tends towards making this a comic entertainment (and Morrissey is a natural bombastic comedian, as he showed us in Hangmen), rather than a state of the nation play.

Still, the State of the Nation is very much under consideration if only because this show takes us from Blair to Brexit, and while it exposes life's endless compromises, it nonetheless makes a strong case for ever-trying to revive the ever-flailing corpse of progressivism.

I enjoyed the whole cast, and outside of the three principals above, I especially Laurie Davidson's weak young amiable drug-addled sibling, whose role seemed somewhat informed by a very similar character played at the National by Rory Kinnear in "Last of the Haussmans," another State of the Nation play.

This play may only be a blip in the history of political plays, rather than the "end of history" promised, but I found it the funniest and most entertaining of these types of shows, despite not being the most impactful.

4 stars from me.

I found the humour so obvious and forced (along with the rest of the story - I mean, calling their son Karl?) that at times it was like watching some awful ITV sitcom from the 90s with a few political references thrown in here and there.