The National Theatre’s brand new big-budget play, called Manor, has been more savagely panned by the critics than any other in living memory. These reviews are truly toe-curling.
‘Breathtakingly inept,’ said The Times — giving it a rare No Stars.
‘A soggy disappointment,’ said the Daily Telegraph.
‘Schlocky — basically nonsense,’ said Time Out.
Even The Guardian, usually a great cheerleader for the theatre — especially Left-wing theatre, of which this is a such a prize example — called it ‘Clumsy, crass and unconvincing,’ awarding it just one star.
The turkey arrived in time for Christmas, as almost all critics noted.
Since it’s been closed for months due to Covid, it’s not as if what is supposedly our most prestigious theatre — or the play’s writer Moira Buffini — haven’t had time to create a truly sensational comeback. And don’t forget that the National hoovers up an eye-watering £16.7 million a year of public money via the Arts Council.
We are the ones responsible for this. The play itself has already been reviewed and thoroughly demolished by Patrick Marmion in this newspaper — ‘rambling and frankly bonkers’. It is as terrible as what the critics are claiming. I was there this week.
Manor — which is directed by writer Buffini’s sister, Fiona — is a sustained and shrill political diatribe about the terrible threat of both climate change and the Far Right, which according to the play are somehow mysteriously interlinked.
It’s located in an old country home that is slowly falling apart, and it seems to be at risk from the sudden rise of extreme climate change. As the storm continues outside, the manor is home to many waifs and other stray animals seeking refuge from the torrential rain.
The National Theatre’s brand new big-budget play, called Manor, has been more savagely panned by the critics than any other in living memory. These reviews are truly toe-curling
The puppet characters are so clichéd and condescending, you cannot help but grumble: there is an old gay vicar, a brave black nurse and a troublemaker from the far Right who wears black wellies that look like jackboots. Geddit?
As I got up to walk the three-hour, yes, three hour, ordeal, it was time for me to eavesdrop on everyday theatregoers. In this instance, expostulating in humorous exasperation. Some of these gems were truly exceptional.
‘That’s the maddest play I’ve ever seen!’ said one. ‘Nuts!’ ‘Insane.’ ‘I have absolutely no idea what that was about,’ said a twenty-something girl. ‘Me too,’ agreed her friend. ‘It was quite depressing actually.’
These spectacular demolishments by theatre-loving audiences and professional critics raise a pressing question: How can a play so grotesquely evil and self-indulgent ever make it onto the stage?
For the answer, all we have to do is look at the subject: Climate change and extremism. Cultural elite of today love the far Right and insist it is the greatest threat to society.
There are, of course, other pressing political issues they could tackle — Islamist terrorism, for instance, or the far Left and its rampant anti-Semitism.
The Left-wing theatre, however, is afraid to touch the topic of Islamism and only does this in the most child-friendly and cautious way. It almost always does it wrong when contemporary theatre deals in politics.
As The Times reviewer points out, no fewer than three London theatres, The National, the Royal Court and the Donmar ‘are all staging ambitious explorations of politics and ideas, and all three are woeful. Are we running out of playwrights who have even a basic grasp of how society works?’
We are, indeed. Today, our cultural panjandrums only read The Guardian. They talk exclusively to each other at their favorite North London artisan coffee shop. This is why a piece as stale, lame and infantile, like the National Theatre’s new disaster, can only be explained by it.
The manor house in the play is a clumsy symbol of Britain, whose history is nothing but ‘War’ and ‘Slavery’, we are told: a wretched, decaying post-Imperial Britain, as the production would have it; rather than, say, the dynamic, modern Brexit Britain that first gave the world the AstraZeneca vaccine, or that invented the miracle material graphene, one which could revolutionise technology.
Far-Right agitator, who is straight and white on stage as the assertive male white man on the platform, is also the personification of evil. He abandoned his wife and children, he beats up his girlfriend, he is, as the saying goes, ‘full of hate’.
He could represent all white straight men.
And if you’re not sure, to make it quite clear, one of the characters explains about climate change: ‘It’s white hormonal men! Their testosterone is going to destroy the world!’
This was my favorite moment from the evening. It had me laughing out loud behind my mask. This sounded almost like Millie Tant’s deranged feminist in Viz. But I don’t think unsmiling and correct-minded theatre high-ups read Viz.
Another unintentionally hilarious moment was when we learned that the far-Right villain was preparing to launch a ‘Tenth Crusade’ in England to ‘cleanse’ his country, and had the plans for it all ready in his briefcase. (Yes, really, I’m not making this up.)
But then his deadly plot was foiled when his briefcase was stolen — by two teenage lesbians! This utterly childish plot idea made me shiver so hard that I thought my chair was about to fall below me.
The play itself has already been reviewed and thoroughly demolished by Patrick Marmion in this newspaper — ‘rambling and frankly bonkers’. It is as terrible as what the critics reported. I was there this week.
Finally, to make sure you are fully on message, a lengthy essay in the programme explains to us about ‘Climate action as the antithesis of white supremacy’.
This is the strangest and most delusional worldview we have to deal with in our current culture.
A world view quite divorced from such as facts as China being the planet’s biggest climate polluter, or the citizens of Qatar having the world’s largest carbon footprint per capita. You get a further sense of this as you browse in the National Theatre’s bookshop before the show. Titles available include Against White Feminism and The ABC Of Equality. 50 Queers Who Made a Difference in the World are also included.
I finally found the right title. It was called Maybe I Don’t Belong Here.
Our cultural commissars, however, are completely committed to their worldview and incapable of moving beyond it one second and learning more about the real world in all its complexity.
Perhaps they don’t need to, safely subsidised as they are. The National still has a respected enough name — for now — to attract corporate sponsorship as well as subsidy.
The Garfield Weston Foundation sponsors Manor, whose funds come in part through its Primark clothing ownership. Quite how Primark melds with the delicate eco-sensitivities of the team behind Manor is anyone’s guess. The money, however, is certainly appreciated.
It’s hard to know how seriously to take this particular debacle, and you still hope that laughter and true tolerance might win out. In this High Temple of Woke at the heart of PC World you have to worry about laughing.
The pious and joyless priests, as well as the disciples, of this new, terrifying form of misanthropic puritanism are known to laugh, so any other opinions or views are strictly prohibited.
The disasters are sure to continue, so long as our culture is ruled by the lazy Left.
The vast majority of people will feel confused and bored and scolded, shamed, and shut out.
- From January 1, Nationaltheatre. org.uk.