Describing the plays of James Graham as ‘history podcast theatre’ would be mean and inaccurate but also a bit true. To be clear, Graham has produced many wonderful works of drama. But even when he’s not at his absolute best dramatically you’ll still come out of one of his historical dramas having .
The Standard of Living isn’t quite Graham at his best dramatically, because where his finest works have tended to be hyper-fixated on small, manageable periods of history. Here he almost has too much to say about his subject: the great economist John Maynard Keynes.
Did he want to write a drama about Keynes’ membership of the Bloomsbury Group and the tensions that crept in between the gay economist and his bohemian artist pals when he went to work for the government, and when he later dumbfounded them by bringing home a woman, the blunt Russian ballet star Lydia Lopokova (Natalia Osipova)?
Did he want to write a play about Keynes’ rivalry with the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek (Laurie Kynaston)? Here the two are depicted as genuinely fond of each other, but so aghast at the other’s economic visions that they can’t help but becomes enemies.
Or is The Standard of Living about… the standard of living, and Keynes’ belief in not only spending out of a recession, but that an infusion of art – be that the Degas paintings he snaps up for a song at the beginning, or Arts Council England which he founds at the end – is of as much value as hard cash?
Inevitably Graham has tried for all three here and I think it might have made for something stronger if he’d zeroed in on just one.
Almost certainly the most enjoyable play about an economist
Because they’re all interesting! We tend to revere the Bloomsbury Group, in large part because they produced the generational talent that was Virginia Woolf. Graham treats her respectfully enough via Naomi Frederick’s foreboding, almost otherworldly portrayal. The rest, though, he casts a much more ambivalent gaze on: bickering, snobbish bohemians whose lofty ideas, sexual progressiveness and prodigious artistic talents lead to them haughtily rejecting a world that needs their help, insulated from the two World Wars and Great Depression by Keynes’ cash (not that they’re grateful).
The idea of Keynes and Hayek as the angel and devil battling for the economic soul of Britain is a fascinating one, and their complicated relationship comes to a head in a superb scene in which they unexpectedly encounter each other while serving as fire wardens in Cambridge during the Blitz.
And it’s easy enough also, to see that the play stands as a lecture to our jaded age about why art is important. Graham has long been a passionate advocate for the importance of the arts and the colossal return that Arts Council money offers.
But none of these points has the force it would if the play focused on just one of them. The Group drifts in and out and has mostly disappeared from view by the end; Hayek doesn’t turn up until quite late on and it feels like a slightly weird beat when we go to the interval with him abruptly set up as Keynes’ arch rival; the last few minutes offer a slightly thesis-like summing up that probably wouldn’t have been needed if the whole thing been allowed to breathe a bit more.
It is still pretty damn good: nobody brings the past to life with the verve of Graham. It is, to be fair, almost certainly the most enjoyable play about an economist ever written. Kinnear is a delight as Keynes, who combines starchy Victorian gent, idealistic Boy Scout and sexually liberated bohemian in equal measures: he’s like an overgrown child prodigy who is is socially awkward in pretty much every given situation other than when it comes to shagging anything that moves. I wasn’t sure about his co-star Osipova: the Royal Ballet principal is actually fine in the role of Lopokova but the character does feel very ‘light relief Eastern European’ and she exists more of a disruptor of Keynes’ world than as somebody Graham seems seriously interested in.
Director Nicholas Hytner doesn’t bring the sort of pell-mell energy that’s served Graham’s collaborations with Rupert Goold and Jeremy Herrin so well. But The Standard of Living isn’t that sort of play – there’s a minimum of winky fourth-wall breaking – and his production has a graceful pace matched by a projected set (from designer Bob Crowley and projection designer Luke Halls) that’s dazzlingly awash with the most vibrant art of the era.
Not Graham’s greatest work, but he makes a forceful argument for Keynes, his life and his beliefs. I learned a lot!
Theatre Royal Haymarket, until Dec 12. Buy tickets here.
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