Play - Waste - National Theatre

I'll be honest, I didn't know anything about this apart from the fact it had Charles Edwards in. Thankfully he is (Downton Abbey notwithstanding), as good a cultural kitemark as any.

Waste was written, and is set in, the 1920s as a Conservative government sweeps to power. Interestingly, the action starts with the impressive and machiavellian Julia Farrant at her country house, where she, as the wife of safely-seated MP George, plots to engage the maverick independent Henry Trebell (Edwards) in pushing forward the long-overdue church reform bill. She sees Henry as a great political talent - but also a deniable asset, and a man she would prefer to have inside the tent rather than out. 

Henry has been invited for the weekend, and Julia also invites the languorous Amy O'Connell, socialite and separated wife to an agitating Irish republican (an almost unrecognizably flighty Olivia Williams). A purely physical (for Henry, at the least) attraction develops between the two, with an intriguing but confusing scene where Henry attempts to woo Amy, in an openly formulaic and unfeeling manner - he has no romantic soul, and will say any words she thinks she needs to hear, as long as he doesn't have to mean them. It is only in this early scene where Charles Edwards doesn't seem to hit the mark in an otherwise wonderful realisation of a complex character - Henry is an incredibly decent and principled man, but with very little humanity or empathy. In this first episode he seems malicious, rather than unthinking - and as such it takes time to warm to his peculiar brand of coldness.

Moving forwards, we see Henry accepting the challenge of church reform, with an ambitious and laudable proposal for disestablishment; he will unshackle the Church of England from the state, transforming it from an inflexible collection of ceremonies and landed parsons into the first state education system, putting those Oxbridge-educated clerics to work in improving the minds of the future. Henry gains support from many corners, including the staunchly Christian Lord Cantilupe. Their discussions on the finer points of the bill, including a wonderful passage where Henry (a staunch atheist) explains his evangelical belief in the good the church can do, is intoxicating in its swirl of ideas and power; and, in what is an incredibly cynical and sad play about a timelessly pathetic political class, is a rare and uplifting insight into what it must be to be a great man, with the power to do great things, and to change the country for the better.

We then come to the crux of the play - Amy reveals that she is pregnant with Henry's child, and, as a married woman, they both face disgrace. Amy wishes to 'deal with' the pregnancy, a practice Henry's conscience will not accept. They argue and she leaves, and the frenetically busy Henry cannot find her again to continue their conversation. He rejoins the whirlwind of arrangements and Westminster confidences, whilst Amy seeks her own solution to the unwanted child with a backstreet abortionist. Sadly, in a play with a number of sparkling female characters, this scene (and Amy's subsequent death at the botched procedure) occur off-stage, and from being a witty and intelligent sparring partner, Amy becomes a sad victim, and the play turns from the world of women (including Henry's long suffering and devoted sister) to a world of men, with smoky club dining rooms and iron fists hidden in velvet gloves. 

The question turns to whether Henry can be 'saved' from disgrace, and the Tory cabinet endeavour to organise a hush-up of the 'bad business'. For Henry, harrowed by the events that have unfolded around and because of him, forgiveness is not something he can give himself. However the thought of completing the bill, his bill, offers a light in the darkness. As Henry goes through the ringer, the career politicians add this new bartering chip to their political calculations, and finally get to their perfect zero-sum - changing nothing, and maintaining their own petty power - at the expense of a flawed man and his dream of change. The play is savage in it's skewering of these charming, heartless men - and good on the National for a pointed political staging that casts it's evil politicians as humans, just as craven and grasping as the rest of us, rather than as boo-hiss villains or top-hatted mannequins. 

The play must have been written about the same time as Parade's End, which also features a cerebral, cold central character, who is both gifted but unequipped to deal with modern society. Unlike Christopher Tietjens, Henry Trebbell is not by any means a goodie - he knows what his indiscretions with Amy could mean for both her and him, and he fails to care for anyone, particularly Amy, when they need him most. However he is a fascinating and recognizable character, and, like Parade's End, Waste uses a man-out-of-time to tell a wonderfully progressive story, which still seems shocking in much of it's content today - ninety years since it must have been breaking open taboos around sex and abortion, and indicting the politicians of the day.

Superbly acted throughout, this play made me proud that we have a National Theatre - I can't think of anywhere else that I could have seen a tricky, challenging play about the finer points of government policy, gender politics and human fallibility, and had such a good time doing so.