There has long been a debate about the under-representation of older characters on our screens and stages. It's interesting, therefore, that this play, which puts pensioners centre-stage, should open just days after the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, starring the likes of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Even more intriguing is the fact that Luke Norris's drama is the opening salvo in the Royal Court's Young Writers' Festival.
A young person, A-level student David (Alexander Cobb), is at least the catalyst for the action, when he discovers that his 69-year-old grandfather Frank (Roger Sloman) is having an affair. With the ardent moral certainty of youth, he demands that Frank break off with Rita (Linda Marlowe), or else he will tell Nan Iris (Susan Brown). Given that David lives with his grandparents, he certainly has the scope to make Frank's life tricky.
Frank, worn out from a long and loveless marriage, tells Iris he's leaving. And then Norris, in the first of two such instances - which is at least one more than a 75-minute drama can sustain - has something very dramatic happen.
So instead of watching the painful picking apart of a lengthy relationship, which would have been nuanced if slow-burning, we shift into more soap opera-y territory. It's giving little away to say that this new terrain involves some abrasive analysis of NHS provision.
Director Simon Godwin presents yet another accomplished production in the Upstairs space.
There's fine work from Brown's Iris, stoically resigned to her meagre-ish lot, but no one can surmount the fact that this is one of the Court's weaker recent pieces of new writing.
Until March 17 (020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com)
Goodbye to All That
Royal Court Theatre
Sloane Square
SW1W 8AS
