"Ambitious but lacking dramatic impact": Baroness Wheatcroft reviews 'The Standard Of Living'
Rory Kinnear as John Maynard Keynes and Natalia Osipova as Lydia Lopokova | Image by: Manuel Harlan
4 min read
Keen to escape the forthcoming Budget or on the lookout for new economic ideas? This timely drama does offer some superb acting and clever arguments
On most economic analyses, James Graham’s latest play certainly offers value for money, combining clever argument, superb acting – and even dancing from one of the Royal Ballet’s stars. It also crams together themes that less ambitious playwrights might have carved into several different productions. The net effect, though, fails to deliver real dramatic impact.
Rory Kinnear as John Maynard Keynes and Thomas Flynn as Duncan Grant |Image by: Manuel Harlan
While the life of an economist might not sound like the most promising source material, John Maynard Keynes was an exceptional character driven by many different passions, no dry-numbers man. His story could not be more relevant to politics and government than it is today. Graham and his director, Nicholas Hytner, demonstrated perfect timing in launching this play on London’s West End now.
The drastic differences in opinion between Keynes, who believed in the power of government spending to pull countries through difficult financial times, and those who were convinced that the markets were best placed to produce the solution – represented here by the young Friedrich Hayek – ran through the 1920s and 30s, culminating in 1942. The tussle between Keynesians and monetarists, however, dominated the Thatcher years and continues to rumble on as the government struggles to square its spending ambitions with a huge debt burden.
It seems the audience at the Theatre Royal has been swollen by people from the Treasury, maybe as keen to escape the Budget agonising in Whitehall than to glean ideas from the stage.
Rory Kinnear’s stunning performance in the lead role adds to the show’s pulling power
Keynes’ probing of what amounts to ‘a good life’ and his ardent belief that arts and culture constituted at least as important a component as financial riches gives the plot its potential appeal to a broad audience. Rory Kinnear’s stunning performance in the lead role adds to the show’s pulling power. That, in his final days, Keynes achieved his dream of establishing a government-funded Arts Council should win applause from all theatre-goers.
In getting to that denouement, however, the play has a smorgasbord of issues and events to cover. There is Keynes’ unlikely role as a member of the louche Bloomsbury set, where his affair with the painter Duncan Grant evolved into a lifelong friendship. Its members, notably Vanessa Bell and Lytton Strachey, were shocked when the rampantly homosexual Keynes fell in love with a Russian ballerina and married her. It was her lack of formal education as much as her gender which appeared to shock his intellectual Bloomsbury colleagues, and provides an entertaining episode.
It also justifies the otherwise somewhat incongruous balletic interludes in the play. Natalia Osipova is a wonderful dancer and, in her first acting role, as Lydia Lopokova, puts in a strong performance.Her importance as Keynes’ stalwart supporter is made clear in the later scenes, particularly as in 1944, when he led the British delegation at the Bretton Woods summit in the United States. This established the international monetary framework that would shape the post-war Western world, with the twin institutions that continue to prevail: the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which was eventually subsumed into the World Bank.
As the entire world order seems under threat, The Standard of Living is a timely reminder of the importance of people prepared to battle for decades to advance their deeply held beliefs.
Baroness Wheatcroft is a Crossbench peer
The Standard Of Living
Written by: James Graham
Directed by: Nicholas Hytner
Venue: Theatre Royal Haymarket – until 12 December 2026
