Maryam Philpott — Theater Critic

No other contemporary playwright has delivered such a consistently insightful and significant body of work in the last 15 years, significant because it uses historical settings to examine how we live now, explicating the mechanisms, decisions and tides in the affairs of men that shape the society we have today. The Standard of Living stops short of that, telling us little beyond the flip-flopping between two economic models. It may be a commercial theatre pressure to play down the complex financial discussions in favour of bitchy chat among the snobbish privilege of the Bloomsbury Group, but the play is the poorer for it.

Its content is horrifyingly moving and one of the most important things you will see on stage in this or any year because it speaks so graphically to the very substance of The Years, to the pain, external control and physical impact of the twentieth century on women through the politicisation of their bodies. Transferring from the Almeida Theatre to the Harold Pinter Theatre, Eline Arbo’s stage adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s memoir is hugely affecting and deeply, deeply important.

The music feels progressive, reflecting the determination of the characters who fight and fight again, giving the equivalent of rousing speeches that galvanise the audience and carry them on the long path to enfranchisement. Where most musicals offer up a few rousing songs at the beginning and end of each Act, Sylvia is one stirring song explosion after another. From Make Some Noise in the middle of Act One, to March, Women, March, Suffrajitsu and Be the Change, the blend of funk, hip hop and garage is effortless and who doesn’t want to see Winston’s Churchill’s mother as a badass grime artist!