Allelujah!

Alan Bennett (The History Boys, The Lady in the Van, The Madness of George III) is renowned for his regular successful collaboration with stage director Nicholas Hytner. Bennett’s plays often draw on his idiosyncratic and very personal experience of the issues affecting contemporary British society.  ALLELUJAH! especially operates in this vein as it draws on the widespread concern about the demise of the NHS that has dominated debates in British politics in recent years. Bennett effectively employs wry humour that produces an incisive view of the ills in British culture.  His exploration of some of the darker repercussions of the impetus of the political landscape in the UK is particularly poignant.

The story is set in The Beth, which is an old-fashioned cradle-to-grave hospital in Yorkshire threatened with closure as part of an efficiency drive. In a desperate measure to rescue the hospital the chairman, Salter (Peter Forbes), allows a documentary crew to create a film that will support its fight for survival. The filmmakers uncover more than they bargained for while capturing the daily struggle to find beds on the Dusty Springfield Geriatric Ward. It also documents the therapeutic value of the old people’s choir which gives the patients a renewed lease on life.

The ensemble cast perfectly captures the way in which the indignities of ageing are exacerbated by a system that does not know how to manage an increasingly ageing and ageist society. Bennett reflects on this through his very jaded view of the family relationships which sees the elderly abandoned to the mercy of an increasingly failing healthcare system. Characters such as Ambrose (Simon Williams) and Mrs Maudsley (Jacqueline Clarke) beautifully capture the way in which their spirits are slowly crushed and the incredible uplifting effect that music, dancing and singing brings to the drudgery of their everyday experience. Sister Gilchrist (Deborah Findlay) makes a remarkable shift from the stereotypical strict but well-meaning nurse to a sinister figure. The play is unforgiving of her actions but depicts her as caught up in the fray resulting from the threats to her profession. 

The combination of social realism and musical escapism that this production employs is not always well married. The set lends itself to gritty realism but is not able to easily accommodate the delightful music and choreography. This tends to emphasise the intense pathos of the story and the very grim view of the world it is portraying.

Patricia Di Risio