National Theatre revives banned classic

Waste is true to the name, a play about dashed hopes and broken dreams. It’s a damnably English affair.

Banned in 1906, it has, in parts, relaxed gently into middle age. The back story – a political scheme to cut the British church and state apart – would struggle to move many outside the back end of Belfast. But focusing on the setting and the antics of our anti–hero, career politician and cold–blooded atheist, Henry Trebell (Charles Edwards), would be a mistake.

Waste is one great shout against that system, and the petty class tribalism that accompanies it

The doomed relationship between Trebell and the wily, married Amy O’Conell (a sparkling Olivia Williams) is a summary of the plot – and a side note. His first and last, it barely makes it beyond a one night stand.

However, things roll along smoothly enough from here – and we follow the consequences of this illicit affair, until Trebell is left a purposeless, broken man.

That said, seeing Waste as just another Victorian fable about the ruin of idle sex would be as sloppy as the backstreet abortion that exposes our loveless couple. The real punch of the comment here is the reverse. Waste is one great shout against that system, and the petty class tribalism that accompanies it. The ‘system’ is the only real character ever on stage. Personal details are irrelevant and the story arc is obvious. It’s the crazy mechanics of the political downfall that this play speaks about. However, Waste is a bemused caricature of a system of double standards that is somehow stable, but run on a completely fake, theatrical morality. We come away with a certainty, that to a man, this is a cast of hypocrites. Trebell’s executioners – a pluck of adulterers, a pinch of monied holiness are as guilty as he. Being right is simply a case of not being caught.

In that sense, it’s as sharp today as when the ink dried. Lord Horsham, anxious and waiting, pale faced for Mr. O’Conell could be Gordon Brown on the night of the expenses scandal – or Henry Trebell a Nick Clegg of sorts (who was invited to speak to the cast, but refused).

The National’s, clean – even ‘IKEA’ like staging does an excellent job of emphasising this bigger picture. The cast are swamped by the space of it – little toy cogs in the great big messy engine of politics. It looks – in a way that isn’t cheap – as if it all might be packed up and swept away in an instant. There’s a constant, brooding sense of mortality to it. As the play puts it, “Either life is too little a thing to matter or it’s so big that such specks of it as we may be are of no account.” The effect is marred only by some fairly clunky screen transitions (blackouts in all but name) that give the whole thing a disconcerting hint of punch and Judy. In theme maybe, but it’s a killer for the pace.

Actress Sylvestra Le Touzel deserves special mention as the motherly, bumbling sister to Edward’s Trebell. A character which could so easily become unbelievable and fluffy – noise to be drowned out by Trebell’s thunderous idealism or the sleaze around him, Touzel manages a set of wonderfully balanced monologues. In the space of a scene we are moved – (in a way that goes so lightly on the mozzarella you might miss it) – to take as a brother a man who has never known how to love. It’s very careful work – to be strong in this eggshell, pitiable kind of way, is a hard balance to hold.

Above all, Waste reminds me of two things. It’s a challenge not to accept convention for convention’s sake. Crucially, it’s a reminder that we shouldn’t take change for granted. Progress is not always inevitable. Perhaps we have pushed back some of Granville’s demons, but the fact his words are still sharp, living things today is warning enough. Ultimately, he tells us , we should not bind ourselves or turn away from the truth. As Trebell, that dead, broken idealist would say – “The fear of life is the beginning of all evil”.

Until 19th March at the National

Tickets from £15