Alan Bennett’s new hospital drama is just what the doctor ordered
Allelujah! Bridge Theatre ★★★★★
Holy moly: a new play from Alan Bennett, his first in six years! A godsend for his long-term director and collaborator Nicholas Hytner just as he’s trying to put the Bridge on the map. And a major cause for rejoicing among the faithful, too?
Well, yes and no: even the most reverential admirer of this mildmannered creative colossus may at times be caught between feeling “thank heavens” and “what the hell?”. Combining high doses of whimsicality and topicality, Bennett’s serio-comic look at the way we treat the elderly – set largely in the geriatric wards of a northern hospital (“The Beth”) threatened with closure – occasionally has the puzzling air of a rushed job. In the programme notes to
Allelujah!, theatre’s reluctant national treasure – now 84 – cheerily confesses that he doesn’t like to get too bogged down in research before he embarks on a script. Hence the way The Beth has attributes mightily redolent of a care home, with long-term “residents” and its own choir.
That use of poetic licence allows for the evening’s most glorious aspect – when stooped, shuffling ranks of the elderly and infirm croon old-time numbers, with gentle dance-moves to accompany their poignantly frail vocals. It also sets up a more unsatisfactorily provocative element of the story: with so few patients in a position to be discharged, it falls to a self-appointed angel of mercy (Deborah Findlay’s sinister Sister Gilchrist) to let the most incontinent meet their maker, thereby freeing up bed space. A case of one bad apple, or a targets-driven system that’s rotten to the core?
Further contrivances are so glaring you may want to consult an eyespecialist. One of the (incredibly) few visitors is Colin (erstwhile History Boy Samuel Barnett), a sleek management consultant keen to hasten this overly “cosy” hospital’s demise and accelerate Whitehall’s NHS streamlining, even though his own father, obstreperous former miner Joe, is one of the patients.
Throw in a hospital trust chairman who’s absurdly garrulous in front of a flimsily plausible TV crew, filming the campaign to save the place, plus a vigorous nod to the workforce implications of Brexit, and you almost want to lie down in a darkened room just to recover from the sense of thematic overkill.
Yet these deficiencies are far outweighed by the humanityaffirming zest of the thing. Andrew Marr suggested Allelujah! was a “state of the nation” opus when he interviewed Bennett at the weekend, to which the latter genially countered: “When you put it like that, it seems more serious than what I’ve written. What is enjoyable, I hope, is the relationships between the people on the ward.”
Enjoyability is the watchword. Bennett’s aptitude for sublime turns of phrase remains in rude good health, and it’s royally served by the cast. “She was C of E but with all these vicars being had up she went over to atheism,” deadpans the daughter of a woman with dementia tellingly preoccupied with the house she’s been ousted from.
Even if individual characterisations could do with being fleshed out, overall there’s something inspiringly defiant about placing centre-stage those who lurch on Zimmers, loll in wheelchairs – too often banished from society’s view.
The play may not be up to the standard of The History Boys, yet as the childlike geriatric gaggle finally troop off, the healing power of music again magically sloughing off the trappings of age and mental decay, I felt as stirred as I was by Bennett’s portrait of youth looking to the future. Amid this crazed, stressful summer, just what the doctor ordered, I’d say.