Man and Boy

Anthony Lau’s lucid revival of Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy at the National Theatre, cuts to the heart of this postwar drama, revealing a disturbingly contemporary study of greed, reputation and paternal failure. At its centre stands Ben Daniels (often on a table), delivering a performance of heightened intensity as the vice slowly tightens round him.

Rattigan’s 1963 play follows Gregor Antonescu, a financier whose empire is collapsing under the weight of its own deception. Retreating to his estranged son, Basil’s flat in Greenwich Village as scandal closes in, Antonescu manoeuvres desperately to preserve his standing, even if that means sacrificing everyone close to him in cruel and creative ways. It is a study in transactional living: every relationship a ledger entry, every affection negotiable.

Lau’s production dispenses with most period trappings, merely indicated through language and costume, clearing the way for total concentration on relationships and the impending personal and financial collapse. The visual spectacle, which turns the theatre into something like a huge snooker room with Art Deco touches intensifies the focus on the central drama which is gripping from start to finish. The moves are precise and often stylised, the whole cast tightly connected as the drama intensifies and we await the final shot.

Daniels Antonescu looks like he has just stepped out of the gym – a pumped and desperate man refusing to be defeated even as his sleep deprived, coke addled body threatens to burst. He as intoxicating as he is repellent, inducing pity even as he uses everyone around him. Instead of a cold villain, he presents a man who believes utterly in the logic of his own actions, is too deep in to do anything other than survive, deploying charm like a weapon. Rattigan’s play clearly suggests that Antonescu’s tragedy is not that he lacks feeling, but that he has disciplined himself into suppressing it in order to fulfil the capitalist dream.

The production’s moral fulcrum rests on the relationship between Antonescu and his son, Basil but also delves into the relationship with his wife and his right-hand man played with great subtlety by Nick Fletcher. The father son scenes are charged with an uneasy tenderness, Antonescu’s affection constantly undermined by self-interest. But his other intimate relationships are equally fascinating as his wife and employee make moves to secure their own futures. Despite larger than life characters, Lau handles these exchanges with restraint, allowing Rattigan’s precise craftsmanship to do the work.
If the play occasionally feels schematic, its arguments remain potent. Rattigan was writing at a moment when Britain was renegotiating its relationship with wealth and power; today, the questions land with renewed force. What is success worth if it corrupts the soul and destroys families? Can love survive in a climate of perpetual calculation? Lay does not impose contemporary parallels, yet they hover insistently at the edges of the stage.

Daniels anchors the production but each performance is noteworthy illuminating the dark glamour of a man who mistakes control for strength and ends up entirely alone. In doing so, he makes Man and Boy feel less like a period drama and more like a warning that never quite went out of date.


Photo credit: Manuel Harlan