THE ECONOMIST AND THE BALLERINA
That “iron streak of tinsel” which Alan Bennett once observed in Nicholas Hytner has again come good, giving us a play about early 20c economic theory which we can go home humming. Literally: I am happy to report that on the way out I both overheard both the words “of course the money supply..” , and “Cezanne”, and several were humming tunes from Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet. I call that a result.
James Graham hit on the life of the economist John Maynard Keynes at, we are told, this director’s suggestion. It’s a good fit because Graham has a particular capacity to absorb other people’s professional ideas and technicalities in extraordinary detail, and meld them with his eager, curious desire to understand human feelings and needs even in the oddest public figures. And Keynes happened to be not only a great mind, which forged a theory of economics as a moral science tasked to to enable a “good life” for ordinary people, but an unusual member of the Bloomsbury Group. In between jobs and rows with the Treasury he had affairs with Duncan Grant (a nicely West End fey debut by Thomas Flynn). and Lytton Strachey (a grumpy Pip Carter) , and long cosy domestic friendships with Woolf , the Bells and the rest. He fitted in nicely with these selfconscious artists, being gay, but then abruptly fell in love with the Russian Ballet star Lydia Lopokova. (A shining Natalia Osipova). They made a happy lifelong marriage. If that’s not a good story, what is?
I have to admit that there were moments early on when I was irritated by the sexual politics – our hero cottaging with sailors, spun-out reminiscences at Charleston with his Bloomsbury exes, absurdly prurient nonsense as the more solidly gay chaps wonder how it can work with a woman. But the sense of LGBTpropaganda is only brief (and hey, it fills seats these days) because the great theme of Keynes himself is bigger than any tiresome identity-politics could ever be.
And Rory Kinnear is a marvel, creating an instant likeability in Keynes and showing, beneath the weskit and watch-chain of Edwardian respectability, a banked fire of childlike fervour for the cause of ordinary people’s entitlement to “a good life” whatever that means to them. He is hot with indignation at the willingness of laissez-faire market-economics in government to condemn millions to miserable squalor in the hope that everything balances itself out in the end . “People only have one life!”. His duels with Laurie Kynaston’s crunchy little Hayek, once a disciple then a hawk of brutal austerity , are wonderful. And if it is not quite true that in the Blitz they once found themselves together on ARP night-shifts, it should be.
But of course the glory of the role – served with great sweetness by Graham’s script – is the point when he falls in love with Lopokova, to the amusing disgust of the Bloomsbury set : by that time he was bankrolling them due to the Depression, but it doesn’t stop them from beefing about his “chorus girl”. And this fine-tuned emotional line of relationships takes any dryness out of the economics in which we are being gently educated. We can relish Strachey’s literary jealousy of Keynes’ vitriolic attack on the policy of starving-out the Germans after WW1, and enjoy the elegantly staged interest-rate mazurka when Treasury , Bloomsberries , Hayek and Keynes and Lopokova all whirl around changing partners.
Indeed all the ballet moments are quite lovely: bits of Firebird, Facade, Sylphides flitting across the stage amid the artists and Treasury politicians, beautiful metaphors for the human need for circuses as well as dry bread, wonder and beauty and entertainment as necessary as sustenance.
The staging by Bob Crowley is spectacular, alternately monochrome period photos of street, strike and war and blazing, overwhelming projections of canvases from that shining period. It is hard to imagine a better tribute to the Keynes who, in irritated exile in Cambridge, founded its first ever theatre and whose last great triumph, with WW2 still to pay for, was to enthuse the 1945 government to found not only the NHS but the Arts Council
. As to what’s come since, it is elegantly offered in the last few minutes, leaving us thoughtful on the day of the big Burnham speech of hopes and promises. But we’re also happily humming.
Box office. trh.co.uk. to 12 December
Rating 5
