Audiences split by Bennett’s people

PEOPLE, Lowry, Salford to Saturday
Alan Bennett’s most recent play experienced something rarely encountered by the playwright before: less than unanimous acclaim.

Bennett’s previous works have gone round the world, been made into hit movies and generally won him the role of national treasure second only to Stephen Fry. But not this time.

Opposition
“People” isn’t, oddly, about people. It’s about an absence of people, specifically Dorothy Stacpoole’s (Sian Phillips) apparent wish to keep people out of her decaying stately home so she and her half-sister Iris (Brigit Forsyth) can live out their days in desperate privacy and poverty — though they would quite like the plumbing and heating to work.

Ranged in opposition is her arch-deacon sister, who is courting the National Trust to take the place over and turn it into a visitor attraction. Bennett, whether in jest or anger, has quite a rant at the National Trust and the Church during the course of the slightly bitter comedy; indeed at one point he brings Dorothy’s old flame into proceedings and effectively suggests hiring out the house for the flame’s business — pornographic movies — is as good or better a way to raise money than giving the place to the Trust.

The porn guys at least got the boiler working . . .

Contrary to expectation I enjoyed the play’s first half, despite its rather obvious targets. Bennett’s understated sarcasm fires enjoyably and Sian Phillips and Brigit Forsyth are wonderful together, their timing perfect. But the half would work almost as well on radio, so devoid of action is it. After the interval, the comedy descends a little towards broad laughs as the porn crew battles to film despite physical obstacles and the visit of the bishop as they work.

With the finale Bennett ventures into similar territory to his earlier play “Enjoy”. In that one a back-to-back terrace and its occupants become a living museum piece; this time Dorothy and Iris are guides to their own lives as the NT embarks on a ghastly living-history exercise.

But what ultimately brings the play into mixed-reaction territory is the way it moves from good fun to a rather sad, elegiac beast; perhaps Bennett is feeling his age.