BWW Reviews: VERSAILLES, Donmar Warehouse, February 27 2014

In a drawing room reeking of Betjeman's "...Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness / Half dead and half alive" (the ghost of one of those whom age shall not weary is often physically present), Mrs Rawlinson frets about her friends, grieving for their son, slain in the charnel house of the Western Front. She's also uneasy about her daughter's intentions, since spirited Mabel is too free to be pinned down by a boy soldier who survived. She worries less about her clever, charming son who is off to Paris as a junior "Sir Humphrey" advising the pols on the Treaty that was to divide the world so foolishly, so understandably. Turns out she had reason to worry about them all.

Peter Gill's new play Versailles (at the Donmar Warehouse until 5 April) is a long, serious, occasionally funny, occasionally infuriating examination of the impact of The Great War on the residents of a nondescript Kent village and the impact of the uneasy Peace on the world. Such ambition needs a lot of time and a lot of words, and both invaluable gifts are given by the Donmar's artistic director, Josie Rourke, who is happy to host a three-hour production. It seems almost churlish to quibble about anything swimming so boldly against the tide of a culture ever more compressed into 140 characters, but, well, it's my job.

Much, as one would expect of a play with such pedigree, is excellent. Francesca Annis' matriarch is trying to do the decent thing, knowing that her Victorian sensibilities are being swept aside by women like her daughter (Tamla Kari) keener to get a paying job rather than a husband (a stiff-upper-lipped, shellshocked Josh O'Connor) and Constance Fitch (Helen Bradbury) less keen on a job, more keen on the politics of pacifism and feminism. Rather less willing to cede ground to the upcoming generation is Mrs Chater (a disdainfully unrepentantly racist Barbara Flynn) and Geoffrey Ainsworth (Adrian Lukis) who has one eye on what's in it for him and the other on Miss Fitch.

While much of the tension between these men and women is revealed by the arched eyebow or the pompous remark, the tension between clever handsome Leonard (Gwilym Lee) and brave handsome (and dead) Gerald (Tom Hughes) is rather more palpable - childhood friendship having long ago spilled over into something more physical, though hidden of course.

If the love lives and domestic politicking remain interesting, if a little familiar, it's in the international politicking that the play shows its strengths - and weaknesses. There's a lot of exposition, with Leonard's research journeys to the Durham and Saar Basin coalfields firing leftist sentiments rather as research in Manchester affected Friedrich Engels 70 years earlier. Leonard is egged on in his growing disillusion with geopolitics by Gerald's ghost - his experiences on the Front convincing him that the world needs to be invented anew and not merely managed differently. I'm afraid that these moral lectures rather reminded me of Jiminy Cricket, an chipper external conscience, and it grated after a while.

There are a few references that throw the action forward (with bankers' venality, the greengrocer's class consciousness - if not the greengrocers' daughter's - and the sheer implausibility of nationalising industries all getting a shout out) which felt a little forced. I'm not sure that the phrase "I'm up for that!" would have been heard in even the most progressive circles in 1919 either - another distraction. And, in an already long play, the gay relationship between Leonard and Gerald didn't really add much - was that subplot's unfolding really needed?

Ultimately, for all the good intentions to shed light on how 1919's mistakes were both excusable and disastrous, the best moments of the evening were provided by Simon Williams' turn as aristocratic civil servant The Honourable Frederick Gibb. His barbs about the coming world to be administered by an elite of clever middle class boys, are both heartfelt and, best of all, genuinely funny. It's a shame we didn't see more of him.

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