Future Conditional, theatre review: a clichéd lecture

Though the subject of education is a hefty one, this play doesn't give it a sufficiently fresh or gritty treatment, says Henry Hitchings
Appealingly witty: Rob Brydon as Crane with Nikki Patel as Alia
Henry Hitchings14 September 2015

I firmly believe that Matthew Warchus will achieve great things at the Old Vic. But his tenure as artistic director gets off to a shaky start with this clichéd play about education. Tamsin Oglesby has written several distinct sketches rather than an integrated, weighty and satisfying piece.

First we see Nikki Patel’s Alia, a mature and optimistic student of Pakistani heritage, being subjected to a hoity-toity Oxford interview. Then we’re exposed to pushy parents, at the mercy of the postcode lottery and fretting over which schools their kids should attend.

After this, in true Dead Poets Society style, we see Alia’s inspirational teacher Crane (an appealingly witty Rob Brydon) presiding over an unruly class. Finally there’s a group of drably suited policy-makers, who sit around having tetchy meetings — Alia drops in to propose a radical new way of awarding places at the country’s leading universities.

The play’s best scene is one of these meetings, in which Brian Vernel’s wonderfully direct Bill tangles with Joshua McGuire’s smug, plummy Oliver. Here Oglesby manages to illuminate the extent to which tribalism impinges on philosophies of education. There are some zingy lines, and a tin of flapjacks becomes an instrument of class war.

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1/50

But the play often feels like a lecture. Characters are mouthpieces for ideas, rather than taking on three-dimensional life. Earnest, thoughtful Alia aside, it’s all about the grown-ups, and they’re a predictable bunch. This is a world where someone who looks like a toffish blimp will invariably turn out to be a toffish blimp — culturally insensitive and keen on nepotism.

Warchus’s production opens with a montage of audio clips that remind us how political education has become. But while the subject is a hefty one, its treatment here isn’t sufficiently fresh or gritty. Although the boisterous approach — more Teen Vic than Old Vic — injects a new sort of vitality into this famous theatre, it can’t mask the imperfections of the material.

Until October 3, The Old Vic (0844 871 7628,)

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