Waste

Description

A scandal half-stifled is worse than a scandal. One is at everybody's mercy. Backstage at a hung parliament, visionary Independent Henry Trebell is co-opted by the Tories to push through a controversial Bill. Pursuing his cause with missionary zeal, he's barely distracted by his brief affair with a married woman until she suffers a lethal backstreet abortion. Threatened by public scandal, the Establishment closes ranks and coolly seals the fate of an idealistic man. Famously banned by the censors in 1907, Harley Granville Barker's controversial masterpiece gathers a large ensemble to expose a cut-throat, cynical world of sex, sleaze and suicide amongst the political elite of Edwardian England. This edition was published for the National Theatre's revival in November 2015.

Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946) was the most brilliant British director of the first quarter of the twentieth century. His best known plays, including Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain), were written as contributions to his Company's repertoire of provocative modern drama for a subsidised national theatre, a cause he championed in his book A National Theatre: Scheme and Estimates. Waste was first presented by the Stage Society in 1907, before being revised and produced at the Westminster Theatre in 1936. Other plays include The Madras House, first produced at Duke of York's Theatre, 1910; The Secret Life; and His Majesty, which received its first production at the Edinburgh International Festival by Orange Tree Theatre Company in 1992.

Written in 1907 and revised in 1926, it takes its time (just over three hours), but encompasses a vast amount: English smugness and hypocrisy, the intricacies of power and the danger of divorcing campaigning idealism from emotional fulfilment. Granville Barker's skill lies in his seamless blend of private and public life . . . You emerge wrung through from a play that is not only the source of much state-of-the-nation drama but also, I suspect, Granville Barker's own self-indictment. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * When the Lord Chamberlain gave the thumbs down to Harley Granville Barker's play about a politician's adulterous affair in 1907, was it the drama's references to abortion that spooked him? Or was it in fact the playwright's breathtaking cynicism about politics? It is that clear-eyed scepticism that gives the play its modern appeal. * Financial Times * The story at the heart of Harley Granville Barker's Waste - that of a political idealist brought low by scandal - has not dated one jot since the day it was written in 1907 or indeed since its first performance in 1936. * What's On Stage * a remarkable play in its combination of sex, politics and religion. . . . in addition to acute psychological understanding, [Barker] shows a laser-like eye for the hypocrisies and shifting alliances of political life. . . . this is a play that deserves packed houses for its unsparing dissection of the ongoing English malaise. * Guardian * Sex, sleaze, death, hypocrisy and loads of political humour. * The Times * phenomenally shrewd and clued-up * Independent * so packed with fascinating ideas * Daily Mail * An important play, for sure, and one with echoes in the modern era * Time Out London * A chilling example of the heartless art of politics. * Mail on Sunday *