Robert Tanitch reviews Rules for Living at National Theatre/Dorfman Theatre
Playwrights have always got a lot of comic mileage out of the horrors of families coming together to celebrate Christmas. Sam Holcroft’s enjoyable Rules for Living travels a road well trod by Alan Ayckbourn in Absurd Person Singular and Season’s Greetings.
Mother wants the festivities to run with military precision. Needless to say things do not go well. Part of the problem is that there are two brothers and the older one fancies the younger brother’s wife.
Holcroft’s gimmick is a huge score board which alerts the audience as to how the characters are going to behave in advance. Thus we are told the older brother (Miles Jupp), a successful solicitor, will start lying the moment he sits down and eats.
Similarly, whenever the younger brother (Stephen Mangan), a failed cricketer, affects an accent we know he is going to mock everybody and most of all himself. If his wife (Claudie Blakely) takes a drink you know she is going to contradict what has just been said.
If the elder brother’s galumphing, tactless girl friend (Maggie Service) stands up you know she is going to embarrass everybody. Meanwhile the only way mother (Deborah Findlay) can keep calm is to start frantically cleaning.
The comedy, directed by Marianne Elliott, is in expert hands of all the above actors plus John Rogan who is cast as senile dad, a dirty old man still groping.
The comic high spot is a family meal to end all family meals, the likes of which have possibly not been seen on stage outside of the music halls and pantomimes. It is the play’s true climax, impossible to top, and, probably, a mistake therefore to have a downbeat coda after it.
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