Harley Granville Barker was a remarkable figure, the last great actor-manager of the Victorian mould, but also the first truly twentieth century director and playwright. Proof he was ahead of his time: his 1907 play ‘Waste’ got a big fat ban as a result of its portrait of the machinations of the British political establishment.
So yes, he’s an important figure and it’s right that the National Theatre should do its bit to keep him in the canon. But dear me, that doesn’t stop Roger Michell’s revival of ‘Waste’ being a chore. Concerning the downfall of maverick Tory politician Henry Trebell (Charles Edwards), Michell’s production frequently feels like an episode of ‘House of Cards’ slowed down to about quarter speed. Amongst other things, there is a tremendous amount of droning on about the disestablishment of the British church and state – Trebell’s pet political project – that is of moderate incidental interest but is almost totally irrelevant to the central plot.
This concerns confirmed bachelor Trebell’s brief, devastating affair with the unhappily married Amy O’Connell (Olivia Williams). She falls pregnant and dies after a backstreet abortion; a scandal starts to brew – Trebell’s peers first try to suppress it, then resolve to throw him under the bus.
It’s an interesting story told at enormous, unhurried length. As Amy, the excellent Williams is a hysterical woman, but with cause – she is trapped by a patriarchal society, and her efforts to remain somewhat liberated are all horribly undone by the pregnancy. There is a great, appealing vibrancy to Williams’s performance that slices through all the grey around her. But after she’s gone, some of the late scenes – in which middle-aged white guys discuss middle-aged white guy business at quite interminable length – almost feel like a pastiche of male, pale theatre in its least progressive form.
Edwards gives a committed, credible performance as a man driven by political conviction, not selfish passion, but perhaps as a result he never really succeeds – perhaps never even tries – to really make us like Trebell. Despite Hildegard Bechler’s elegant, abstract sets, Michell’s production feels bogged down in drab naturalism and excessive longueurs. An important play, for sure, and one with echoes in the modern era, but it’s presented here as a museum piece.