A couple of weeks ago I went to People by Alan Bennett at the National Theatre: dutifully full with an audience averaging seventy: nothing wrong in that of course, except that it was quite a surprise to see the National Theatre usurping or taking over from the old West End of the fifties and sixties.
Here is William Douglas-Home of the liberal left, in a barely disguised Lloyd George Knew My Father kind of play, demoted from Home counties and building a motorway through the family estate to North Yorkshire, to a dispute between sisters as to whether the decaying ancient pile should go to the National Trust or a private entrepreneur as a conference centre; it was a very mediocre star vehicle for Francis de La Tour. Hardly a new joke or a new situation in whole evening : resoundingly ‘droll’.
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