James Corden has been absent from the London stage for 12 years. Back then he delighted audiences with One Man, Two Guvnors. He has now returned and chosen a play that couldn’t be more different. The Constituent is essentially a two-hander with Anna Maxwell Martin – and you know she’s always going to be good. She is, very. Corden himself is astonishing.
The Constituent starts as a comedy and there are plenty of great one-liners in Joe Penhall’s pacy political piece (90 minutes, no interval). Alec is an ex-soldier returned from Afghanistan and, looking for stability and family life, he’s bought a dog, swapping “the believers for a retriever”. Monica is a hard-working, compassionate, idealistic back bencher and Alec, now working in security, is fitting an alarm system in her constituency office.
Reminding her that they went to primary school together, they get talking. Life is tough for both of them. Monica is over-worked and frustrated about what she can achieve; Alec has found his post-military life falling apart, estranged from his wife, who has a new partner, and losing contact with his children. Alec is angry and has started writing a blog about fathers’ rights and wants Monica to help him. She is sympathetic but constrained by her role.
This is the divide at the heart of the play but they are divided, too, by their different ways of understanding the world and how they express themselves within it. Alec (the bloke is an ex-soldier, after all) sees injustice and rails against it – as a result, he finds himself in the family court because he’s made a threat against his wife’s new partner. Monica wants to find ways to help that, to Alec, just sound hollow – therapy, counselling, mediation. Alec is not unhinged but he is on anti-psychotics (the man clearly has PTSD) and when he gets particularly vehement, Monica gets scared.
Two issues emerge. The plight of ex-soldiers and male victimhood on the one hand – “every man I know is a victim of violence or abuse,” he howls at one stage; and the intimidation and violence against MPs, particularly female ones, on the other. The gap is unbridgeable and widened ever farther by Zachary Hart, who as a police protection officer advises Monica to imitate a robot, keep her constituents at arms’ length and eventually gives her a stab vest.
Things, of course, go downhill from here and, while the script at times could turn the characters into ciphers, the actors rescue it. Hart gives a fine comic performance. Anna Maxwell Martin is subtle and nuanced whether whispering comfort to her children on the phone or the victim of an office break-in. Corden is a revelation, falling from quipping, chippy soldier into total vulnerability. This is quality acting – you won’t see anything finer on the London stage.
The Constituent runs at the Old Vic until 10th August. For more information, and for tickets, please visit www.oldvictheatre.com.
Photos by Manuel Harlan, courtesy of The Old Vic
