The Late Middle Classes

Synopsis

Celia is bored to distraction; Charles is obsessed with his work; and their son is having his first lessons in music and in life. Simon Gray’s funny, melancholic and captivating play about a young boy trapped between two types of oppressive love reveals the frustration, secrets and guilt of middle-class respectability in 1950s England.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 2 June 2010

There was a rumour, never confirmed, that “theatrical politics” kept Simon Gray’s The Late Middle Classes out of the West End ten years ago, linked to a  snobbish assertion that a boy band musical (rather a good one, I recall) had replaced it on Shaftesbury Avenue.

So David Leveaux’s Donmar revival at least provides an overdue opportunity to test the critical suspicion that this might really be Gray’s lost great play. One always wants to be definite in these situations, but I find myself hovering. And the production is not totally persuasive, either.

A grown-up Holly, now a psychiatrist, returns from Australia to visit his old music teacher, Mr Brownlow, on Hayling Island. The grand piano swings round, and there is his younger self playing a bagatelle that Brownlow composed when he was his favourite pupil in the 1950s.

Mike Britton’s greenish set is a large wall-papered surface with outlines of doors and windows that never open. Young H...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

rds - 8 July 2010:

I can't for the life of me remember what my review was for - see 1 * at the bootom of this page. WOS have clearly got a problem with the site. Anyway, about The Late Middle Classes -I note David Baxter's comment on Helen McCrory still having trouble with some of her lines well last night it wasn't only her, the only one who didn't was the excellent Laurence Belcher as Holly. What a tedious first act redemmed only in part by a better second. Peter Sullivan mumbled his lines to such an extent that I hardly got a word of what he was saying and he had some of the best lines in the play and I know I wasn't alone in thinking that. Direction was clearly a big issue here, but even with a director more in tune with and sympatheic to Gray's writing I still think the Donmar shouldn't have ressureccted this play. It originally ran for 2.45hrs, thank christ that was cut doiwn to a more bearable 2.25hrs last night. When I think of the plays out there and the new writing that needs to be encouraged and then this old tosh being given such prominence - it makes one dispair! ...

Read more and add your own review

Related Whatsonstage.com Articles

Helen McCrory On ... Middle Classes & Cherie Blair 1st Night Photos: Middle Classes Party at Donmar Review Round-up: Better Late than Never for Gray More»