Synopsis Len’s on his death bed and the family gather to say their final farewells. His sisters still aren’t speaking after nearly 20 years, his nephew’s trying for a baby - and a bigger house, while his best mate Ken remembers ‘Bas-vegas’ when it was a village. As the spread is laid out and the ham sandwiches sit next to the wreaths, it’s hard to see who’s hungry and who’s just greedy. An epic family drama exploring inheritance and the myth of place. Age Guidance: 14+ Downstairs
David Eldridge's new play In Basildon opened at the Royal Court this week (22 February 2012, previews from 16 February).
Directed by artistic director Dominic Cooke, the play follows the final moments of Len, whose family and friends gather at his bedside, and explores themes of inheritance and greed in "the heart of Essex".
“The simmering family feuds in David Eldridge’s fine new play are threaded through a discussion of the lives they’ve all led in transit from the East End … It’s not just because I am familiar with these demographic shifts that I enjoy the play so much; Eldridge is on to something that hasn’t been written about much, or at least so well, in our theatre … Eldridge knows whereof he speaks. His ear is pitch-perfect … It’s all beautifully controlled in Dominic Cooke’s brilliantly cast production which has been placed by designer Ian MacNeil on a traverse stage in a reconfigured auditorium … Unfortunately, one half of the audience cannot see Phil Cornwell’s Len on his deathbed in the first act. Otherwise, the arrangement works well … Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen as Dor and Maur are expert in conveying their seething animosities in profile, and there’s a really delicious performance by Wendy Nottingham as the disappointed Pam.”
“Basildon … in British stereotype – is a byword for a brashly materialistic working-class culture. David Eldridge’s play, though sympathetic to its protagonists, does not present a much more edifying picture … Eldridge is deeply ambivalent about his native Essex … he respects his characters without necessarily liking them … Matters are complicated, though, by the venue … Five years of Dominic Cooke’s artistic policy of ‘explor(ing) what it means to be middle class’ may have defamiliarised the Royal Court Theatre’s audience … It now responds with patronising complacency to a genuine working-class family portrait. It seemed to me that on press night the laughter was a little too free and easy … As theatre, this is a prime evening. Cooke’s production is finely judged … Linda Bassett is a mighty actor … With sterling support from the likes of Peter Wight, Lee Ross and Debbie Chazen. But Eldridge seems too close to his subject to be at ease dramatising it … Eldridge is now one of our major playwrights, but I am unconvinced that In Basildon is one of his major plays.”
Libby Purves The Times ★★★★
“It gets a laugh in the first minute, despite the presence of a deathbed. The giggle meets the opening line as a well-dressed blonde (Ruth Sheen) is greeted coldly by her dowdier sibling (Linda Bassett, ginger with grey roots). 'Hello Maureen'. 'Hello Doreen'. The chiming makes the laugh uneasy: are we at this arena (it is done in the round) to mock the lower-middles? … Playwright David Eldridge’s exasperated affection and pitch-perfect observation carry the same spirit … The comedy is at times considerable … and a sharp script is directed with spot-on timing by Dominic Cooke … The rising generation are beautifully drawn: tax-fiddling plumber Barry and his stroppy wife (Lee Ross and a terrifying Debbie Chazen) are set against his graduate cousin Shelley … She has not only shacked up with a hilariously cartoonish Guardianista, Tom (Max Bennett) … He states lofty revulsion at the bourgeois ways of the National Theatre: 'I walked away! Broke into a run! Like Maupassant from the Eiffel Tower. Horrified!' The Royal Court audience loved that.”
“A gloriously rich, humorous, agonising and politically provocative play … staged by the Royal Court's artistic director, Dominic Cooke, in a bafflingly peculiar, not to say, counterproductive way ... Eldridge has a wonderful ear for dialogue that typifies the quirks and quiddities of this tribe … and he has an Ibsen-like gift for bringing to the surface the intricate emotional under-webbing of the past. But in placing the audience on two sides of the action … the production makes the characters look, from the circle, like specimens under a microscope. And Ken, who rightly gives Labour a large share of the blame for the current crisis, is able to score points too easily off the condescending self-deception of the young Oxbridge banker's son (Max Bennett) who is too much this play's crude fall-guy in his mission to represent the masses. Otherwise, very warmly recommended.”
“A juicy slice of working-class Essex … At times deeply poignant … Shelley's posh boyfriend Tom … 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.”
“The best play about British working-class life since Peter Gill's The York Realist … Eldridge writes about the emergence of the new Tory working-class without a hint of patronage or condescension … If Eldridge's play has echoes of Arnold Wesker, who wrote his own play about Basildon called Beorhtel's Hill, or of DH Lawrence, in the laying-out of a corpse, they are the right ones. And this richly observant play is given a near-perfect production by Dominic Cooke who, with designer Ian MacNeil, restructures the Court so that the audience, like the family, is divided in two. Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen as the warring siblings, Peter Wight as a defiantly local patriot (‘I'm authentic Basildon’), Wendy Nottingham as a loving neighbour and Max Bennett and Jade Williams as the cultural outsiders also give first-rate performances. Eldridge may not endorse Essex's new rightwing materialism but he records it with absolute fidelity.”
“David Eldridge’s watchable new play … The Royal Court’s main auditorium has been given an unusual configuration … Len’s family are grasping and sour and their protestations of kinship are made to look hollow. Peter Wight uses his resonant voice to good effect … The play, true to its title, is in some ways a portrait of the values of Essex, part affectionate, part mocking. We learn the not exactly earth-shattering fact that blue-collar Essex is Right-wing. Once or twice it is as though Mr Eldridge has pasted in sentences from a social guide to the county. Yet he also has a good, wry ear for dialogue … A jerkiness in some of the writing is compensated for by fine acting, not least from the Misses Bassett and Sheen and from Phil Cornwell as Len in earlier life. In the final act, Mr Eldridge … observes that family traits can be repetitive and squabbles can be born of sentimental intentions. Although it is not quite carried off to perfection in this spirited and interesting play, that is certainly the stuff of tragedy.”
“This fine new piece by David Eldridge … sees a return to good old-fashioned working-class drama ... What makes In Basildon such a success, though, is Eldridge’s sharp and witty ear for demotic dialogue, and a cracking plot … With great skill, Eldridge brings to life a big family … The bickering, the shifting alliances and the great will-reading scene in this cleverly constructed four-act drama … all combine sharp humour with dramatic clout. This is one of those too rare plays in which you really want to understand the secrets of the characters and learn what will happen next … Cooke directs a gripping, admirably acted production. Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen chillingly capture the corrosive resentment of the sisters, while Lee Ross (as Bassett’s son) and Debbie Chazen (as his wife) hilariously lay bare an unhappy marriage blighted by infertility and fecklessness. There are also funny, touching turns from Peter Wight as Len’s best friend, and Wendy Nottingham as one of his former lovers. Eldridge both knows and understands his flawed but far from contemptible characters, and there is an underlying compassion here that never curdles onto sentimentality.”
Len’s dying in Basildon. His sisters, Maureen and Doreen (or “Maur” and “Dor”), who haven’t spoken for 20 years, gather at the bedside together with best friend Ken, neighbour Pam and nephew Barry, who lives in a council flat with his overweight wife Jackie.
The simmering family feuds in David Eldridge’s fine new play are threaded through a discussion of the lives they’ve all led in transit from the East End in the Second World War to “overspill” Essex in Romford and now the “plotlands” of Basildon and nearby villages of Laindon and Vange.
It’s not just because I am familiar with these demographic shifts that I enjoy the play so much; Eldridge is on to something that hasn’t been written about much, or at least so well, in our theatre. Just as Ken is “authentic Basildon,” Eldridge is “authentic Romford” with a few twists.
Ironically, he even incorporates a well-meaning, middle-class dramatist, the boyfriend of Len’s niece Shelley, who wishes these people would pull themselves together and get some culture on the hilarious and patronising grounds that “art” is the least they deserve. Ken sorts him out big time.
Eldridge knows whereof he speaks. His ear is pitch-perfect. Len has worked hard all his life at Ford’s and in management. The sisters have fallen out over the legacy of the house (as we see in a flashback final scene). And Barry (Lee Ross) is desperate to own his own place, hopefully Len’s. Barry’s pushy wife Jackie (Debbie Chazen) is a slight problem, too – she’s from Barking.
There’s a feel of Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party about some of this (Leigh said that masterpiece was set in “theoretical” Romford), but with the reading of the re-written will - which has been entrusted to Peter Wight’s earth-larding, domineering Ken - we’re suddenly in an update of an Edwardian, or even Manchester school, cliff-hanger.
It’s all beautifully controlled in Dominic Cooke’s brilliantly cast production which has been placed by designer Ian MacNeil on a traverse stage in a reconfigured auditorium (similar to that for Roy Williams’ Sucker Punch), complete with pine-style sideboard, chocolate stripy sofa and an odd mix of comfy and functional chairs.
Unfortunately, one half of the audience cannot see Phil Cornwell’s Len on his deathbed in the first act. Otherwise, the arrangement works well. And the staging even accommodates a black, drunk vicar (Christian Dixon) who slugs the whisky while executing that creepy task of researching his eulogy.
Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen as Dor and Maur are expert in conveying their seething animosities in profile, and there’s a really delicious performance by Wendy Nottingham as the disappointed Pam, declaring her “spread” open at the wake and nursing a flickering flame for the marginally obese Ken.
Len’s death rattle is followed by a reconciliatory chorus of the West Ham anthem, “I’m forever blowing bubbles,” and if the only way is Essex, local (or nearly local) audiences will enjoy the memories of the Hammers and the chicken run and the idea that a new generation – Shelley (Jade Williams) and boyfriend Tom (Max Bennett) – are re-colonising Walthamstow, which now has good transport connections and “is like Highgate in the village.”
I'm with Vanessa. Left at the interval feeling patronized. I'm from the area in question. Such laboured dialogue - overstuffed with local research and recognition gags (yes, Jeremy Clarkson gets a predictable mention. Needs a script overhaul by someone with Ayckbourn's know how. - Job
05 Apr 12
Fantastic. I am white working class(nearly middle class-cos I got myself an ology). Living in Romford, teaching in Rainham. Nothing about this play is condescending, it just shows the reality of life in essex right down to the pickled onions and wallies. It is strange that its being performed in Sloane Square, but if you think that this is a play about laughing at the working classes then you probably don't get the jokes. - Claire Blakemore
31 Mar 12
Left after the first half - completely wrong accents, wrong facts and history. I've seen better school plays - the attempts at humour were juvenile at best e.g.the vicar falling down drunk. The actors seemed bored and unconvinced by the poor script. - Vanessa
26 Mar 12
My train to London goes through Basildon - cue jokes about this being the best way to see this unattractive new town, original home of the stereotypical white van man and Essex girls in white stilletos which has so afflicted perceptions of the rest of the county. David Eldridge has a more empathetic view of the residents, seen here through the microcosm of a family riven by ancient feuds and squabbling over the promise of bequests from a will. It's like a Mike Leigh play but without the feeling that we are supposed to feel a superior scorn for the characters. In fact the least sympathetic character here might be the idiotic boyfriend whose liberal middle class gulit probably reflects that of a large part of the Royal Court audience. Although he doesn't patronise his characters, Eldridge doesn't sugar coat their casual bigotry, venomous hatred and barely restrained violence towards almost anyone, or their refusal to move on from strict Thatcherite views of getting on through hard work and a hatred for the welfare state (in practice that never stood up to the dole culture). Eldridge's gift for dialogue is superb and frequently very funny, especially if you recognise all the local references. Although you may not care much for these people the play makes you very keen to find out the contents of the will and the reason for the vendetta between the two sisters (Doreen and Maureen!) even if the final act flashback is disappointing after such excellence in the first two acts. The cast are exceptional, although it was possible to spot which accents were authentic, with Peter Wight superb as Ken, the dead man's best friend, who despite his puffed up pomposity proves to be every bit the loyal friend he purports to be. He also has the funniest moment when he leads the singing of I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles over his friend's dead body, even whilst protesting he's a Spurs fan. I was lucky enough to have a seat in the temporary circle but I suspect that a large proportion of the audience couldn't see much of what was going on which is a shame because In Basildon is a very funny and truthful account of a families' life in overspill Essex. - David Baxter
23 Mar 12
As the audience take their seats, Len is on his deathbed, his sister Doreen watching over him as nephew Barry and best mate Ken look on anxiously. Then sister Maureen arrives (she and Doreen haven’t spoken in 20 years) and so the tangled, complicated world of this warring family from Essex is brought to life and its compelling stuff. Add to the mix, the sisters’ children with their anything but straight forward relationships, Len’s “best friend” Ken, neighbour Pam and a vicar with a taste for the whisky and thanks to Eldridge’s brilliant writing and intelligent observation and Dominic Cooke’s superb direction, we have a first rate modern day family drama about British working class life.
The play may be set “In Basildon” but with its themes covering family rancour, grudges, politics, infertility, education and class, it will I’m sure resonate with many of us all over the country.
The final scene, taking us back to 1992, seeks to explain how the sisters come to hate each other. After the incredible intensity of the earlier scenes, it feels a bit clunky and the play loses momentum; I wonder if this could have been better integrated? Still, this is a minor quibble. All of the actors are excellent and all deserve great credit, each delivering strong and totally believable performances. Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen as the estranged sisters are utterly vile towards each other. There are some touching and funny moments too, especially from Peter Wight’s Ken and Wendy Nottingham’s Pam.
The Royal Court has been redesigned for this production with the audience sitting opposite each other on either side of the stage. This doesn’t entirely work - half of the audience can’t see Len as he lies on his death bed, but most of the action can be seen by everyone.
This is one of the best new plays I’ve seen in years and one I shall definitely see again. It deserves a West End transfer.
- Paul Wallis
21 Mar 12
On the blob, superb! - coral
19 Mar 12
I thought the play was excellently acted. And like Gareth James, the first reviewer, thought this was a far better play than Knot of the Heart, which I thought shallow contrived and just not very good. I thought the first act was strong and moved well, but the second act far less so. At times thematic, veering away from the play's central focus, it could have been shortened by 20 minutes at least without any loss of impact. Having said that, a very entertaining play. - Roger Goldsmith
16 Mar 12
It’s hard to believe that this excellent new play comes from the same pen as my 2011 Turkey of the Year, Knot of the Heart! This uber-realistic and authentic piece is a huge contrast with the other’s implausibility. As playwright David Eldridge hails from the area in which it is set, I suspect this time he’s writing from experience – and it shows.
Len is dying of prostate cancer and we’re in the living room of his home (in Basildon, obviously) where a bedside vigil is in progress – sister Doreen (who lives with Len) & her son Barry (for whom Len was a father figure) and Len’s best mate Ken; neighbour Pam is on tea duty. We’re soon joined by estranged sister Maureen who won’t talk to her sister (and vice versa) directly. The family feud is revealed but not understood. Doreen is further upset when it becomes obvious that Ken knows more about Len’s wishes than she does.
We move on to the wake, joined by Barry’s wife Jackie and Maureen’s daughter Shelley & her boyfriend. Shelley is the one member of the family who escaped to university. She became a teacher and returned to the East End where the family originated and where she now lives with boyfriend Tom, who’s own escape was in the opposite direction from his investment banker dad. The family feud is further fueled by the reading of a letter from Len laying out the highlights of his will, but we still don’t understand its origin. We finally flash back 18 years where the circumstances of the rift are at last revealed.
This is a very believable family story, but the play has at least two more layers. It shows the late 20th century exodus from the East End via inner Essex towns like Romford to places like Basildon even further away. We glimpse the reasons for the moves and attitudes that accompanied them. Furthermore, it explores how the political changes of the last 30 years have impacted these particular working class families. I lived and worked in Essex for 18 years during this period and it oozes authenticity. The family story also resonates with me!
The theatre has been reconfigured for Dominic Cooke’s pitch perfect production, with the audience on two sides and two levels. Though this does provide a bit of a bear pit for the family exchanges (well, from where I was sitting anyway), I’m not sure it was worth the trouble and expense.
The performances are uniformly excellent. Linda Bassett and Ruth Sheen are both terrific as the sisters, both in estrangement and closeness. Lee Ross brilliantly conveys the complex set of emotions Barry experiences – living with the family feud, his hinted financial troubles and Jackie’s more overt desperation for her own home and child (superbly played by Debbie Chasen). Peter Wight’s conveys that special relationship of ‘the best mate’ with a nice touch of old man letch.
It owes something to Mike Leigh (and there are a couple of Leigh regulars in the cast and a reference to his most famous play), but it’s an original, well structured and deeply rewarding play which will undoubtedly feature in the list of 2012′s best and another must-see at the Royal Court. - Gareth James
28 Feb 12
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Left at the interval. Something wrong about people living near Chanel and Cartier shops laughing at the working classes. Bit like being at a zoo. Not that funny or interesting. Avoid. - James
26 Feb 12
It's brave when playwrights tackle class and money, because you are always going to get accused of stereotyping people. Does Eldridge stereotype public school liberals with Max Bennett's fawning know-it-all character? Does Eldridge stereotype the Essex working class by depicting a right wing family who care about graft and money? Does he stereotype vicars by showing one getting sloshed? He certainly raises the stakes by calling this "In Basildon," as he is asking us to generalise from his depiction here of this one Basildon family to draw conclusions about other Basildon families. And I say, how brave and fair enough. Even within this one family, there are many different points of view about how to live life, acquire money, fall in love, so it's not as if he's saying all working class people are the same. What he is saying is more universal than any of this, that money tends to destroy blood ties, and to be frank, that's true regardless of class, as Max Bennett's posh character has fallen out with his father, in much the same way as Basildon sisters Maureen and Doreen fall out here. So, essentially Eldridge writes about the universal from the local Essex context he is so familiar with. And very convincing it is too. All the actors here are very very good, offering immensely convincing authentic feeling performances. This has the feel of a Mike Leigh production where all the actors know their characters inside out. Perhaps Max Bennett's toff and Christian Dixon's vicar are slightly more comic characters than the others, but they work well, as they leaven the weight of what is essentially a serious drama about money destroying a family. Linda Bassett's miserable Doreen, Ruth Sheen's grudge-wielding Maureen, Ken Wight's good egg, Wendy Nottingham's invisible woman, Lee Ross's wide boy Barry, Jade William's class conflicted Shelley, all these are acting performance gems. And credit to Max Bennett, he really plays the funniest moments of the play to a tee, when his public school lefty goes off on one! :) - steveatplays
The first theatre opened as The New Chelsea on 16 Apr 1870. Changed name to Belgravia. Re-opened as Royal Court 25 Jan 1871. Demolished in 1887. New theatre opened (current, slightly different site) 24 Sep 1888. Famous for supporting and commissioning new writing. Probably the first UK Theatre to regularly include their URL in advertising. Member of the Society of London Theatre. In 1996 the theatre closed for redevelopment, funded by the National Lottery. The refurbished theatre at Sloane Square re-opened in February 2000 including two theatres the 389 seat Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and the studio style Jerwood Theatre Upstairs.
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