This is the fifth new Howard Brenton play in seven years at Hampstead Theatre; what I call his late flowering period. I’ve enjoyed the previous four, on subjects as diverse as Charles I, Ai Wei Wei, the partition of India & Lawrence of Arabia, but this one didn’t really work for me. It’s inspired by, rather than adapted from, Thomas Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure, which began life as a magazine serial.
The themes of education, class, religion and morality are still there, but the protagonist is now a Syrian refugee called Judith. She cleans for teacher Sally, who befriends her but soon finds her somewhat demanding. Somewhere along the way she has a child by laddish local Jack, though he doesn’t seem to figure much in her life. Judith learns Greek and Latin and moves to Oxford, where she lives with (and beds) her cousin Merch and studies for A levels. Here she befriends Deirdre, an eminent professor who, when she gets her results, finds her a place and a bursary at the University. Then the secret services intervene.
The story is a bit thin and more than a touch implausible. The first half is particularly slow, but things do step up a notch or two after the interval. It’s not a patch on his other work though, and Edward Hall’s somewhat static production fails to bring it alive, looking lost on a big round virtually bare stage. Isabella Nefar is extremely watchable as Judith, with an edginess that is sometimes mesmerising. Caroline Loncq is particularly good as Deirdre, though she does have the best lines, chief among them one where she describes the application of a self-educated Arab single mother as boxes ticking themselves.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Brenton’s best writing about true subjects and real people.
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