The Royal Court under Dominic Cooke has tended to concentrate on middle-class experience. But David Eldridge's new play offers a juicy slice of working-class Essex.
Rather than the familiar imagery of Towie or Birds Of A Feather, Eldridge serves up something closer to Chekhov - albeit with a meaty Essex twist. This a play about inheritance and domestic disharmony, at times deeply poignant yet replete with references to West Ham and Walthamstow's defunct dog track.
At the outset the focus is the sickbed of 60-year-old Len, who is dying of prostate cancer. Aged 20, he moved out of east London; he has since devoted his working life to the Ford plant at Dagenham. Now, as he fades away, he is surrounded by his family.
They are in conflict - at first discreet, later violent - about his legacy. His sisters Doreen (Linda Bassett) and Maureen (Ruth Sheen), who haven't spoken in years, can both lay claim to a share of his property. But others also have expectations: Doreen's plain-spoken son Barry, Maureen's upwardly mobile daughter Shelley, and, as it turns out, even good-natured neighbour Pam. Presiding over formalities is Len's playful best friend Ken (Peter Wight). As the banter flows, old animosities mingle with more recent political and social tensions.
After a few too many drinks Shelley's posh boyfriend Tom, an aspiring playwright, expounds his hilariously patronising ambition to write "something that relates to ordinary working people". Through Tom, Eldridge comments trenchantly on matters of class.
Cooke's production, intimately staged in the round, is finely crafted. Wight, Sheen and Bassett all deliver heavyweight performances, and there is vividly compelling work from Lee Ross as Barry.
Eldridge's script contains moments of pungent humour. Yet it's not just a chorus of guffaws.
Instead of recycling stereotypes, he probes or shatters them. The results aren't always easy to watch, but this is a piece packed with unsettling symmetries. A tepid final act adds little, fleshing out a backstory that needn't be made so explicit. In this last phase the drama loses some of its momentum and fizz. Still, In Basildon is scrupulously observed, and the acting is first-rate.
Until March 24, 020 7565 5000
In Basildon
Jerwood Theatre At The Royal Court
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS
