Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Perishable goods

Plus: a fascinating play about Enoch Powell at the Park Theatre

Labour of Love is the new play by James Graham, the poet laureate of politics. We’re in a derelict colliery town in the East Midlands where the new MP is a malleable Blairite greaser, David Lyons. He arrives to find the office in crisis. The constituency agent, Jean, has handed in her notice but David is smitten by her acerbic tongue and her brisk management style so he asks her to stay. She agrees, reluctantly, and they settle into a bickering rivalry underpinned by affection. But is there more? Possibly, yes, but both are held back by their natural reticence and by fate. Secret declarations of love go astray. One letter is sent to the wrong person and another, written in code, makes sense only when read backwards.

These contrivances aren’t entirely satisfying. And the narrative has a tricky double-helix structure that is ingenious but ultimately damaging to the overall effect. The action starts in 2017, spirals backwards to 1990, then does a head-over-heels and twirls back up to the present day. This divides our concentration. We have to spend so much time deciphering the chronology that we haven’t enough left to focus on the passion between the not-quite lovers.

And the minor characters are poorly sketched. Jean’s husband is a surly Old Labour git in a Harold Wilson mac and a John Prescott scowl. David’s wife, Elizabeth, is a wellies-and-jodhpurs Sloane who seems allergic to the working class. More comedy might have been extracted from her awkwardness among the proles. No one says a word when she breezes into a Labour meeting wearing a purple power suit and looking like Margaret Thatcher about to launch a battleship.

The heart of the play is the charming, ramshackle friendship between David (Martin Freeman) and Jean (Tamsin Greig).

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