Arnold Wesker’s Roots and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger are assured of their place in history. They are to British theatre what Never Mind the Bollocks and The Clash were to British pop music - angry anti-establishment dramas that gave voice to the working class, ending the genteel cultural stranglehold of the likes of Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan.
They are, however, pretty damn old. Released closer to the Boer War than to today, both have been subject to fitful revivals over the years, but their positioning together in an Almeida rep season, headed by a brace of up-and-coming directors feels like an interrogation as much as an affirmation. If Look Back in Anger was still an undeniable classic, surely you’d give it a splashy solo run with a fancy-pants director?
More on that elsewhere. Wesker’s 1959 classic Roots is far less contentious than Look Back in Anger, and relatively less well known. What I think Diyan Zora’s stripped back production makes clear is that a play that was once of-the-now has become a period piece. Following young Beatie Bryant (Morfydd Clark) as she returns to her family in rural Norfolk after a spell in London, Tomás Palmer’s costumes and Naomi Dawson’s props are scrupulously period accurate. As, I think, is the divide between the countryside and big city – I’m not an authority on rural matters, but I don’t think in our connected age the disconnect between urban and rural life is anything like so extreme as the one depicted in Roots.
The real selling point here is a delightfully ebullient turn from Clark. Her Beatie is happy – perhaps even relieved – to return home, but also chafes at a society in which nothing ever changing seems to be people’s ambition for life. Beatie’s head is inflamed with thoughts of socialism and a better world. But it’s unclear how much of what she says is her and how much of it is simply her parroting her absent boyfriend Ronnie, whose pompous pronouncements on the nature of society Beatie breathlessly relays as if they were carved in stone. Beatie needs change – but she needs it to be her change.
Clark is superb – in a break from her grumpier Rings of Power and Saint Maud image, she really injects a lot of warmth and niceness into the role; despite parroting some of Reggie’s overbearing wisdom, Beatie is never truly condescending to her family, and when she finally snaps at her stubborn mum Mrs Bryant (Sophie Stanton) it comes from a palpable place of unhappiness.
Zora’s production makes neat use of light and sound to fill in some of the blanks left by the set – the motif of the half-alluring, half-ominous noise of an orchestra tuning up speaks to the fact that it’s really a play about the beginning of something.
Outside of Clark’s performance, though, I’m not convinced Zora’s brisk, stripped back production is what the play needs. Ten years ago the Donmar’s revival boasted a neat set, an hour extra running time and a star turn from Linda Bassett as the feud-prone Mrs Bryant that isn’t really matched by Stanton’s lower-key take. The thing about Roots is that it isn’t actively problematic like Look Back in Anger, just about and of a different time. It’s like a vintage car that needs to be carefully maintained – cutting it to a terse one hour 45 minutes but doesn’t add much urgency or pace, paring the set back to virtually nothing isn’t a hugely meaningful gesture. It’s a great play and fascinating to contrast with its sour urban sibling Look Back in Anger. But as a standalone piece, I think Roots has more to give than we get here.
