By Amber Bereznyckyj, History and Creative Writing student at the New College of the Humanities
This immense play at the Almeida Theatre, focused on the Webster family, covers the political strife that occurred in the United Kingdom between 1965-2019. It follows from Beth Steel’s 2014 debut play, ‘Wonderland’, concerning the 1984 Miners Strike. Following Wonderland’s great success, reviews on her latest surrealist play have fallen flat. Beth Steel was the daughter of a coal miner and wrote this play because of the 70% leave vote in her home county during Brexit. She intimately understands the British class struggle and the left’s fear and pride in sacrifice. The passionate fighting between the twins Angus and Jack shows this. Angus was left to survive in the town whereas Jack submitted to new Tory neoliberalism during the eighties.
The play opens with a dead Jack (the last Webster) being washed over clinical lighting. It feels like a good minute before we are distracted from the dead body. We forget how it is to really sit with a dead body and this is a theme which is brought up throughout the play as just one way our national lifestyle has changed.
Alister rises in great reanimation and it’s now 1965 with the Matriarch, Constance, in full witty action. Anne-Marie Duff’s magmatism whilst playing Constance reflects a classic kitchen sink drama, with authentic sixties new wave references and Betty Davis quotes. This family are die-hard socialists with Jack a declared communist. However, Constance is insistent that she is middle class and is abominably cruel to her family due to her experiences with her abusive father. Steel is clear in making generational trauma an important theme; however her writing is brilliant in making Constance villainous. From hiding her late father’s jacket to confuse her geriatric mother to selfishly making her daughter Laura’s teen pregnancy about herself, the character is bitterly spiteful – spiteful for not singing for a living, which was never outrightly spoken about. I wish Steel wrote dialogue addressing the singing, though Duff does sing on multiple occasions. Most reviewers praise Duff as the saviour of the performance, but her anger was maxed out continuously which grew tiresome. Steel intended for the family to argue, but, I’m afraid, this was taken too literally. On the other hand, it did do my head in and by the end of act one, I understood that Constance was toxic to this family due to her own feelings of entrapment and disappointment. Scene one ends with Laura revealing she’s pregnant and subsequently dying from childbirth.
Next, it is 1979 and there is a baby in tow but there was no clear introduction to who the baby was. This scene was clearly a commentary on the Winter of Discontent as Jack brings home Helen, a Tory girlfriend! This was the first indication of Jack switching political sides. Helen was a clear voice of feminist change in the play and could have been more potent, particularly with Constance, who always felt trapped. Despite this, Helen is an important character to show the other side of the argument and is a catalyst for the twins’ hatred for each other later on. The most disappointing part of this scene was the unnecessary fire, which caused Webster’s granny to die ‘of shock’. It felt as though Steel couldn’t think of how to knock off the granny. Angus is seen frying bacon earlier in the story and moving that forward would have been more appropriate, or even having granny pushed down the stairs by the ghost of Laura.
Another time jump and it is 1985 and the factories are shut. The scene moves downstage onto soil where Allister is planting seeds when Aneurin Bevan pays a visit. Reviewers haven’t been kind to this scene but Bevan’s appearance is important because Allister is a shadow of the man he was. Their conversation about property being the destruction of society enlivens Allister to his former self and returns to the earlier themes of hope and strength in the unions. It is needed to refocus the audience on the fact that society is changing.
Allister has a heart attack but rises to confront his son Jack. Jack hugs Alister who falls limp in a shockingly realistic fashion. Angus enters, angered by the sight. They argue until Jack shouts, ‘I’m not your Jack!’. This confused the audience. One audience member even asked me whether Jack wasn’t actually Alister’s child even though Jack and Angus were twins!
The first act ends with Allister walking down a trapdoor lit up by ecclesiastical light, followed by the younger Angus. A part of Angus died with her father. Yes, that was the end of act one – seriously, it was that long.
It’s 1996 and the house is dusty and being packed up. Angus visits her mother in hospital where there is the most frightening scene. Laura screams and screams, shaking Constance’s bed, asking ‘where’s my baby, where’s my baby?’. Constance’s guilt is too much for her to bear so she reveals that it was an abortion that killed Laura. A flashback ensues between Jack and his mother: ‘I’ll buy you all the dresses’ Jack promises. In response, Constance kisses her son passionately in a freudian fashion and dies.
It is now 2019, the time of pay-day loans, immigrant labour and Brexit. Jack moved his corporation into town, creating 4000 jobs- it is the time of gentrification. Jack spends his birthday alone at his business HQ for its ten year anniversary party. He makes the all too familiar speech about how he came from nothing but with hard work, he made it. Obviously, this negates the fact that he took a lump sum from his father in law.
The play ends with Constance’s bloodied hands painting Jack’s with Laura’s blood. In the end, Jack’s relationship with his mother left him just as guilty, just as damned and just as alone. He was the last of the Websters alive and by 2019, the old left was dead, the old unions were dead and our new society was underway.
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