Donmar Warehouse, London – until 13 April 2024
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Lucy Kirkwood’s wonderfully warm and witty tribute to the NHS, cinema and pioneering women and Keeley Hawes’ mesmerising performance make this THE play to see in London this Spring.
It’s 1948, and GP, local councillor and prospective Labour MP Iris Alcock (Hawes) is busy with her Shropshire practice, her political duties, and running the home for her husband and daughter. The play starts with a fabulously twee Pathé news clip about her juggling the different parts of her life and she declares that she can only do this because of her supportive husband. When we meet her husband, the reality is laid bare – injured in one of the last actions of the war, his support for her political and ideological endeavours has waned and he will accept no aid for his constant pain. Their marriage is portrayed as civil but distant, with Iris dealing with his little cruelties by just soldiering on and keeping up appearances.
Fly Davis’ gorgeous design has this dreary post-war England represented by uniform institutional blue paint, with stage crew up front and visible resetting furniture as the stage constantly revolves. This drabness is contrasted by the warm glow of his own spotlight when Jack Davenport appears on stage as British film star George Blythe, colourising the stage and Iris’s life. The cinematic nods are acknowledged in the script as Iris and George discuss films, with George’s mockery of Iris’s favourite film – Brief Encounter – signalling the doomed future of their own affair. Onstage camera operators provide footage that is shown on a wide screen above the stage, enhancing the idea that the couple’s time together is a romantic fiction that must end when they return to their roles in the real world. Superb work by Joshua Pharo (lighting design), Ben and Max Ringham (sound design and composers) and Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom (video design).
A chance meeting on the train piques Iris’s interest, and on finding out that George is the son of one of her patients, she engineers another “chance” meeting at a party. The characters’ instant attraction is palpable, and their dancing around each other as they grow closer is written beautifully. These are two middle-aged, jaded people reaching for a spark of passion and joy, fully aware of the consequences. Blythe avoided the war, acting in LA, and his apolitical views and opinions about what the public want and how they will vote create some brilliant opportunities for Hawes to deliver some steely arguments as Davenport goads her with a devilish charm that brings out Iris’s passion and warmth behind the stiff upper lip.
The romance shouldn’t really sit well alongside the barnstorming politics, but Kirkwood has weaved the story so seamlessly, with throwaway lines from various characters building a clear image of the poverty, hypocrisy and inequality of the time that not much exposition is needed under Michael Longhurst and Ann Lee’s crisp but emotive direction. Keeley Hawes is majestic as Iris, looking every inch the 1940s actress on screen but somehow seeming a stronger, “bigger” character on the actual stage – clipped and proper on the surface but with a torrent of passion and fire always threatening to erupt, portrayed effortlessly with a rise of the chin or a subtle shift of the shoulders. Jack Davenport is perfection as the debonaire matinee idol, seemingly carefree, but slowly shaving layers away to show the decent, broken man under the mask. Phenomenal performances from Tom Goodman-Hill, Siobhán Redmond and Pearl Mackie see them all playing multiple roles with varying accents and levels of eccentricity to create a whirlwind of pressure and responsibilities surrounding Iris and George, threatening their happily ever after.
Visually stunning, full of heart and sharply intelligent, The Human Body is a fascinating and hugely enjoyable production – just what the doctor ordered.