Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Union Theatre

Reviewed – 7th January 2020

★★

“a floundering production that simply doesn’t know what it is”

Tom Brown’s School Days is a semi-autobiographical novel by Thomas Hughes, first published in 1857. This production is the latest in a long line of adaptations, and director Phil Wilmott has chosen to set it in WWII, presumably to shoehorn it into the Essential Classics season at the Union, which this year takes this war as its theme. The idea of the season, to quote the programme notes, is to present work ‘in which great writers of the past reflect on the issues we face today’. This seems a stretch for this particular piece. For starters, Hughes can in no way be described as a great writer, and secondly, the script that has been put together by the company (there is no accredited playwright) is thin and uninspiring; devoid of any intellectual or emotional gravitas. At its best it is well-worn pastiche, and at its worst a paeon to all that is wrong with British public school culture.

The plot (such as it is) is a simple one. A new boy – Tom Brown – joins Rugby School at a time when many of the masters are absent, serving in the war, and the old Head has come back from retirement. This Head – Dr. Arnold – wants to eradicate bullying in the school and produce boys who are fit to be the new generation of leaders of the country. Tom and his fellows face down the bullies, and many of them go on to serve in the same squadron, under their former Head Boy. Lest we forget, the programme notes helpfully remind us that these are the ‘upper class young men who’d go on to lead the armed forces to victory’. There is one woman in the play, the resourceful working class cook, who cheerfully helps our boys out when they use their fathers’ money to fund black market feasts for one another, and takes being called a ‘stupid woman’ by our hero on the chin. In Britain 2020, after the most divisive election there has been in decades, and one in which ‘the vast majority of the British people bewilderingly voted to continue to be governed by upper class millionaires’ (programme notes again), the uncritical way in which this story is presented leaves a deeply unpleasant taste in the mouth.

This is a floundering production that simply doesn’t know what it is. The staging – endless and bizarre use of direct address, and plenty of choreographed stage pictures – is pure musical theatre, but it isn’t a musical. And yet…. There are hymns of course, fitting the Rugby setting, but then there are two extraordinary and ill-judged bursts of song which tie in with neither plot nor period: a Jerry Lee Lewis style piano number, and a plaintive guitar solo. There are also jarring moments of melodramatic piano underscore throughout. Reuben Speed’s set looks good, and is well-designed for the space and Penn O’Gara’s period costumes also fit the bill. Unfortunately, the performances are uniformly flat and disconnected. Press Night stumbles aside, which are to be expected and are in no way problematic, this was a production in which not a single actor shone. In the rare high-stakes moments, there was simply no emotional connection in the performances. The words never took flight, and as such, the audience had no investment in the characters whatsoever. This was a thoroughly forgettable evening. Would that the stewardship of Boris and his chums could be similarly consigned to history’s wastepaper basket without consequence.

Reviewed by Rebecca Crankshaw

Photography by Mark Senior

Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Union Theatre until 2nd February

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Midnight | ★★★★★ | September 2018

Brass | ★★★★ | November 2018

Striking 12 | ★★★★ | December 2018

An Enemy of the People | ★★ | January 2019

Can-Can! | ★★★★ | February 2019

Othello | ★★★★ | March 2019

Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens | ★★★ | May 2019

Daphne, Tommy, The Colonel And Phil | ★ | July 2019

Showtune | ★★★★ | August 2019

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | ★★★★ | October 2019

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