Review: LARKIN WITH WOMEN, Old Red Lion Theatre

2022 is Philip Larkin's centenary, so it's no surprise to find my memories a little hazy. The chuggety-chug of "The Whitsun Weddings" (Eng Lit O Level 1979 - grade B, if you're asking), the Eminem-style opening line about your Mum and Dad, the friendship with Kingsley Amis and a vague sense of some politically incorrect stuff at a time when almost nothing could be genuinely categorised as politically incorrect. He died in 1985, about ten years before I would have guessed, at 63, the same age as his much disliked father, a last unwanted gift from the accident of birth.

Not much of that is going on the playbill, but we do get an absolutely splendid show, Ben Brown's award-winning 2000 four-hander revived with tremendous verve and no little pathos by Strut and Fret. Larkin, who looks a lot like Eric Morecambe, had much of that comedian's comic timing and ready wit and, in this version of him at least, holds the misogyny at bay and mines the misanthropy more for its capacity to amuse rather than to wallow in self-pity.

Daniel Wain is super in the role, laughing as much as I can recall an actor laugh on stage, often at Larkin's own expense, railing against the world, against his own shortcomings (personal and professional), against - with a little more seriousness - his block as a poet. Wain shows that Larkin can be insensitive, bend truth to his own ends and stick rigidly to his principles (at least when it suits him) but there's plenty of charisma there, a willingness to laugh at the world with the same schoolboyish sense of humour that morphed into his schoolboyish taste in Soho's under-the-counter, brown-enveloped magazines. Wain delivers a man whom we shouldn't like really, but we do - I suspect the women in his life felt something of the same.

Ah, the women of the title. I've left it 300 words before mentioning them because, unlike more than one play I've seen in the last month or so, these women are fully formed characters, Brown sidestepping the temptation to create them merely to cast light on The Great Man in whom he is really interested. They need no bolstering from your reviewer.

Lynne Harrison plays Maeve Brennan, coyly peeping out from behind a blonde fringe, a junior at Hull University Library invited by Larkin (who was Head Librarian) to his flat for tuition before her exams. Predatory behaviour? Well, she was 31, retained her strict Roman Catholic beliefs (allowing Brown to have a lot of fun giving Larkin cynical line after cynical line about marriage and the value of virginity) and they were together - albeit on and off, it was like that with Larkin - for many years. They not equals at work or in matters of the mind, but she's no victim either. Harrison vests her 'bit-on-the-side' (which is demeaning, but the right phrase for the time) with an ongoing hurt, but a love too for a man she idolised and could never quite leave - nor he her. It was, of course, a less judgemental time, at least beyond the boundaries set by twitching net curtains.

Betty Mackereth was for many years Larkin's efficient secretary, amused and a little fascinated by the man-child she tended (there's brilliant directing by John Gilbert and Jenny Hobson with a briefcase that says more about their relationship than any exposition) who becomes an occasional lover too. Annabel Miller gets a showstopping moment that provoked many a dubious chuckle in the stalls and captures the attitude of a woman who didn't want much, but got it from a man with much the same approach to their longstanding affair.

Mia Skytte goes through a glorious range of 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s Bohemian fashions (Junis Olmsheid is in award-worthy form as the designer, as the set is a delight to look upon and adapatable too) as the love of Larkin's life, the academic Monica Jones, with whom he shared a sense of humour and until very late in life, a fear of commitment. Skytte has a tricky role - she is not quite a wife, but more than just another lover, a source of sex intellectual stimulation and comfort for a man who probably wanted them in that order for the first half of their time together and in the reverse order for the second half. Skytte gets to show why Monica was so ideally suited to provide such, and like Harrison and Miller, creates a wholly rounded individual in whom we believe. It's wonderful to hear her laugh so much too.

There was more to Larkin than we see here - a play with the title Larkin With Men would cast him in a much darker light - but that was not Brown's objective and it's the playwright's call. What we do get from a very classy production indeed, is a warm, affectionate, funny examination of Larkin's relationships with the three women who circled him for much of his life. Larkin is more flawed than they are of course, but there isn't the tang of entitlement on his part nor condemnation from the playwright that would, one presumes, be foregrounded in any such play written today.

That's a moral judgement and you pays your money and you takes your chance with such matters - as a critical judgement, this is a fine example of what small scale, fringe theatre can. Delightful.

Larkin With Women is at The Old Red Lion Theatre until 17 September

Photo: Marc Brenner

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