Tamsin Oglesby’s new play, now at the National Theatre in a production directed by Anna Mackmin, is about old people, and what we (ie, society) are going to do about them, given that in the not-too-far future they are going to be not only increasingly numerous, but also, as one character quite appropriately points out, ‘older than they used to be’. What happens when people live for so much longer after they have stopped working and, most importantly,  being lucid and self-sufficient? What will governments do to put up with the economic and social cost of this, and how will it shape our families?

The production’s programme tries very hard to convince us that this subject is fiercely topical, an idea which was also reprised by many critics. Much is made of figures and statistics, and graphs showing the evolution of the curve defining active population vs the retired mass over the past 30 years. We are also told that scientists expect there will be over a million people with dementia in the United Kingdom by 2025 (assuming, of course, no cure or improved form of prevention is developed before then). At the same time, a veil is drawn over some less comfortable and perhaps less easily approachable demographic truths - including the evergreen and very much poignant issue of class, which is likely to affect the future of the elderly much more than their actual active contribution to society (or lack thereof), but also the future of the British nation as a whole (given no government will be able to raise the pensionable age until the gap in life expectancies between the poorest and wealthiest strata of society is reduced).

Having set off to demonstrate what being old is soon going to mean, Oglesby creates ten characters, belonging to a range of generations and with different but equally strong reasons to care about ageing. Alice, Lyn and Robbie are three old siblings, who, in the moderately dystopian future in which the play is set, need to demonstrate their value to society, and are required by (presumably) law to choose between working, becoming adoptive grandparents, or being used for medical trials. Millie and Dylan are their adopted grandchildren, as well as the representatives of adolescence in the picture, and Cathy is Lyn’s resentful daughter, who has to face her mother’s progressive loss of lucidity and memory. The family scenes are alternated with snapshots from a medical lab, in which two researchers and a policy official are trying to develop a cure against Alzheimer, and to generally come up with solutions to make elderly people less of a hassle to the rest of the population. These include the division of pavements into three lanes for variously fast walkers (Londoners in the audience did not find the idea laughable), and the creation of a robot-nurse in real-life size, who simulates empathy. If you have seen any movie or play depicting a pharmaceutical company over the last ten years, you will know how well-intentioned this second group of people is.

About ten minutes into the evening, it starts to become clear that Oglesby was not exactly sure where the play should go, and with what kind of tone it should get there. We are made to understand that Lyn is developing dementia, and that this is the straw that will shake the status quo into a shower of events. At this point the play could still take various directions: it could investigate the consequences on Lyn’s relationship with Cathy; it could become a damning pamphlet against how easily we shrug off pensioners, or against the selfishness of the pensioned Baby Boomers themselves; it could even attempt a comment on how often the relatives who become carers for the elderly are women, an aspect of family life that feminism will soon need to address as the new child-caring. Oglesby somehow goes for some of these things, plus others, but all without purposefulness . She then moves the text into a sci-fi bank, with a surrealist undertone. In the ensuing confusion the audience looks for a lifebelt of meaning, and finds Michela Meazza’s hypnotizing rendition of the robot-nurse as a hypnotising scene-stealer.

On the one hand, Meazza’s performance is a physical pleasure, particularly amid the anxious and syncopated acting of most of the others - the young Lucy May Barker seems especially uneasy in Millie’s skin. In the second part of the play Meazza’s robot turns into the omnipresent protagonist, and this in spite of having no lines apart from when she apes the mood of her patients as she is programmed to do. On the other hand, her role is used by Oglesby as a diversion in every single scene in which things get too close to reality or personal feelings. Not that there is anything wrong with offering comic relief; but here comic relief becomes the glass ceiling against which all interactions that risk to get touching or emotional immediately crash - and it is a pretty low ceiling, too. Towards the end, I found myself holding my breath during a mother and daughter confrontation, hoping Oglesby would let her characters finally inhabit the same dramatic tension without interrupting, only to be disappointed again when it all suddenly turned into a slapstick chase of the robot around the hospital beds.

The evening has a couple of highlights: Meazza, of course, and also an enraged and half-delirious speech by Paul Ritter’s Monroe, which explodes nursery rhyme and fairytale references like confetti over our heads. Sadly, not enough to make this production worth the time.

Till 20 April 2010