The Standard of Living
Playwright James Graham made his breakthrough with This House, a drama about the hung Labour parliament of the 1970s and at this stage in his career we’ve more or less acceped that he can write about anything and make it interesting. Certainly a drama about influential economist John Maynard Keynes – he’s the guy who came up with the idea of spending your way out of a recession – doesn’t immediately sound gripping. But quite aside from the fact that his economic theories are ripe for Graham’s irrevent but factually compelling stardust, he was also a fasicinating figure, not a dry economist but a bisexual member of the boho Bloomsbury Set, who was married to the great Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova.
Graham’s new play The Standard of Living joins Keynes as the Great Depression starts to bite and he attempts to fabricate a response. Rory Kinnear will play the protagonist, with Royal Ballet principal Natalia Osipova as Lopokova and Thomas Flynn as his lover Duncan Grant, in a production directed by the great Nicholas Hytner.