Secrets revealed as family falls apart

Mar 10 2010 by Karen Wilson, The Journal

Enjoy, at Theatre Royal, Newcastle, until Saturday

WHEN a play is written by a national treasure with a top-drawer cast led by Alison Steadman and David Troughton, the bar is set high. So I’m glad to report that Alan Bennett’s Enjoy fulfilled its promise.

Written in 1980, it follows bickering couple Connie and Wilf – who call each other mam and dad – awaiting the demolition of their back-to-back home in Leeds.

Family secrets are slowly peeled away with a twist you’re more likely to foresee in the stalls. As every character is followed by a grey-suited council official conducting a social study, it allows us to see how people behave when they’re being observed.

The period details are spot on (I spied three things from my parents’ home in the 70s) and there are enough one-liners and farcical physical comedy to counterbalance the tense moments and prevent the play spilling into over-sentimentality.

Yes, some of the themes may seem a tad clichéd now. Post-Billy Elliot, the stereotypical dad disowning his gay son seems to have become a mainstay of northern drama, yet Bennett’s writing has so many layers and spot-on observations of speech and mannerisms, that it doesn’t seem to matter.

As the set is dismantled piece by piece in the closing scene, the pathos is palpable as it echoes the family breaking up and indeed the way of life they symbolise.

Karen Wilson