As the chancellor, John Healey, ponders options ahead of his first budget, the playwright’s new work offers lessons from the past
Still only 44, James Graham has become a formidable chronicler of our national story. On themes such as the rise of Rupert Murdoch, social upheaval in post-industrial Britain and the neuroses of the England men’s football team, the playwright and screenwriter has made it his vocation to read the signs of our times and write them up for the stage.
Graham’s new play goes a bit further back in history, but its subject matter is characteristically of the moment. Opening this week in the West End, The Standard of Living offers a portrait of the sentimental and intellectual passions of John Maynard Keynes (played by Rory Kinnear), as the great economist makes his name between the first and second world wars. As Keynes rails against the laissez-faire ethos of the age, he seeks to devise a theory of growth that justifies state intervention on people’s behalf in the wake of the Great Depression.
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