It is always a pleasure to see plays in an intimate setting and you don’t get much more intimate than in The Lace Market Theatre‘s fifty seater studio space where this week, until Saturday 2nd May, the amateur company are presenting Simon Woods’ political two hander Hansard. Trev Clarke directs this worthy and wordy play with excellent balance and skill. Lesley Brown’s props and set decoration gives the outward impression of a middle class home in the 1980s with plenty of family artefact skeletons hidden under the long table that dominates the room.
It is a complex and fascinating story of a married couple in a difficult relationship which I am not going to attempt to untangle here, nor give you a blow by blow account, but playwright Woods has created a drama that manages not to be overly political but finds its expression in what is probably a 60% personal drama with 40% of the political side of the story related to the bigger picture. Many in tonight’s full and mainly older audience seemed to find the dry wit and 1980s cultural references to their taste. The devastating family revelations towards the end hit their mark.
Charles Moss (Robin Hesketh MP) and Melanie Hamilton (Diana Hesketh) are supremely good in their roles. One might say very professional, confident, expressive and nuanced. Nothing seems forced; there is light and shade in their depictions of the characters’ fraught relationship with each other. The often accusatory marital bitterness reveals starkly different opinions of Margret Thatcher and how her third government incorporated the ant-gay Section 28 into the Local Government Act which stripped powers from local authorities.
To quote the programme ‘Section 28 was particularly aimed at removing any support for young people exploring and understanding their own sexuality and that of others.’ This cruel act of Parliament would have affected many families across the UK and we learn how it tragically affects the teenage son of the Hesketh’s. The statute remained in law as far as 2003 and the AIDS pandemic of the 1990s was badly handled by dishonest reporting.
Another excellent, polished and well programmed piece of important drama from The Lace Market Theatre.
Photo credits: Kathryn Edwards.
