REVIEW: LARKIN WITH WOMEN by Ben Brown at Old Red Lion Theatre 31 August – 17 September 2022

“sex and death in every crack and crevice” ★★★

Sex and death pervade every crack and crevice of Strut & Fret’s production of Larkin with Women which explores a thirty-year span (1956 – 1985) in the poet, Philip Larkin’s life. Written by Ben Brown and featuring Daniel Wain in the key role, the play focuses on Larkin’s messy relationships with three women while he was head librarian at Hull University. The play sets out to present the poet’s perplexing, multi-faceted character. Running at two hours (including an interval) this tragi-comedy or comi-tragedy, centres on the bard’s complex love life.

For anyone unfamiliar with the poet’s work, extracts are threaded throughout, either spoken or as a voiceover.  Directors, John Gilbert and Jenny Hobson make atmospheric use of music too, drawing on Larkin’s Desert Island Disc choices and jazz (Larkin was jazz critic at the Daily Telegraph for a decade). Set inside the cloistered world of his library office, or the homes of Larkin or his lovers, there’s lots of pre-and post-coital smoking, which alongside the subject matter, makes for a warm venue. We discover Larkin was a horny old bard who seems to be in a permanent state of semi-arousal. The fact this balding, bespectacled, bookish man in his formal tweeds and brogues, manages to ensnare not just one but three women, has a fascination all its own.

Although the real Larkin was a lugubrious individual, Wain’s performance is jocular and upbeat; a jolly man, fond of macaroni cheese who bitchily denigrates his more productive peers such as Ted Hughes.  The tensions, conflicting desires and needs of Larkin and his female partners provides emotional drama, alongside the contrast between his private and public persona. Vehemently opposed to marriage, each woman fulfils an emotional, physical or intellectual function. The three women are Monica (Jones) an academic and his intellectual equal, played by Mia Skytte, Maeve (Brennan) a trainee librarian, played by the Shakespearean actress, Lynne Harrison, and Betty (Macareth), his officious and brisk secretary, played by Annabel Miller.

Alongside, the love affairs and sexual conquests, death hangs in the air between every scene change, of which there are many. “Deprivation is to me what daffodils were to Wordsworth” claims Larkin and his morose outlook would even give Morrissey a run for his money. But perhaps, more moving than his inevitable physical termination is the death of his poetry, the dying of the words inside. At one point, he proclaims, “I don’t want to be happy. I want to write.” As we watch him navigate university bureaucracy, marinate his potential in alcohol and squander his energies in sticky-fingered pornography and cavorting, the death of his poetry is the real cause for mourning.

Neatly swerved in this production are Larkin’s well documented right wing and racist views. How very different this play would have been from the perspective of any one of the three women. But Larkin with Women deserves credit for not casting the protagonist as absolute hero or villain but as a flawed and nuanced individual. His outdated views on women and race are an uncomfortable reminder of another age and have ousted him from fashionable woke favour where he teeters on the brink of cancellation.

Larkin with Women forms the theatrical contribution to the Larkin 100 centenary programme that marks a century since the bard’s birth. This is also the year he will be removed from the School Curriculum in favour of a greater diversity of poetic voices.   Ultimately, this production left me wanting more, not less Larkin and I’ll be reading his poetry again with renewed insight.

 LARKIN WITH WOMEN by Ben Brown

Old Red Lion Theatre

31 August – 17 September 2022

Box Office: https://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/LarkinWithWoman.html

Cast:  Annabel Miller, Lynne Harrison, Mia Skytte & Daniel Wain

Directed by John Gilbert & Jenny Hobson

Designed by Junis Olmscheid

Lighting design by Richard Evans & Sound design by Harry Jacobs

Reviewer

Nilgin Yusuf recently graduated from a four-year Creative Writing degree at Birkbeck, where she discovered a dormant appreciation for theatre, scriptwriting and stagecraft. Her short, Sweet Meat, a dark comedy about cannibalism, was a finalist in the 2022 Scriptwriters & Co awards. An experienced author, lecturer and journalist (ex-Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and ELLE) Nilgin is developing her first full-length stage play, supported by Mrs.C’s Collective and the Arts Council.