Astute skewering of liberal hypocrisy
Admissions Trafalgar Studios, London, SW1
★★★★★
Joshua Harmon’s astute comic skewering of white liberal hypocrisy and entitlement – centring on a gifted white American youth who becomes the voice of the dispossessed when he finds his progression to an elite Ivy League education thwarted – found favour with critics when it premiered in New York last year. Given that “white privilege” is a constantly ringing buzzword and our Russell Group universities are constantly under pressure to diversify their intake, it’s not hard to discern the play’s resonance now it has crossed over the pond, with the same director (Daniel Aukin) and an almost entirely new cast, led by Alex Kingston.
Thanks not least to playing Elizabeth Corday in ER and River Song in Doctor
Who, Kingston needs little introduction besides the observation that she’s customarily excellent (and once again proves so). She plays Sherri Rosenmason, a forthright sort who runs admissions at a New Hampshire “college-preparatory”. She and her husband Bill (its head) are textbook bien
pensant progressives, doing their utmost to drive up the number of “students of colour”.
The opening exchange, in which an impatient Kingston reprimands the harried elderly development worker (Margot Leicester’s nicely bemused Roberta) about the lack of non-white faces in the school brochure, sets the drolly observed scene. There are few greater joys than witnessing the smugly superior being hoisted by their own petard, and when Charlie – their smart, super-diligent son – learns of his deferment from Yale, it comes with a special sting. His best friend (the never-seen) Perry, the mixed-race son of stay-at-home Wasp mom Ginnie (Sarah Hadland), has got in – and Charlie is convinced that’s because he “ticked” the right box. Cue outrage from his folks, only for Charlie to change tack and bring the selfinterested nature of their diversity mission into excruciating focus.
It’s a bold, engaging evening, with uncomfortable laughs, one that poses some awkward questions about who decides who gets to “sit at the table” and who constitutes “a person of colour”. If there’s a stumbling-block to fully relishing this talented author’s way with outspoken words (in evidence in his earlier West End hit Bad Jews), it’s that even as we’re invited to sneer at Ben Edelman’s over-indignant Charlie, our sympathies are drawn to him as the most obvious underdog on stage. Edelman majors in relatable anguish as well as surface petulance.
Elsewhere, Miranda star Hadland is mainly uptight, complacent, or passive-aggressive. Bestriding a chic domestic interior, Kingston answers the basic rubric of her part brilliantly – shifting from appreciable determination into subtly registered doubt and a lunge of late-onset maternal warmth – but her character is too much of an Aunt Sally. Amid the taboo-testing “admissions”, there’s a big omission: no visible black characters. Intentional, perhaps, but questionable. Worth a look, then, but maybe a fresh round of application from Harmon could ensure it achieves greater distinction.
Alex Kingston is excellent, but her character’s too much of an Aunt Sally