‘The Last of the Hausmanns’ – Who Gets the Last Word?

The Byre theatre on Thursday evening showed a live screening of ‘The Last of the Hausmanns’, a new National Theatre production by Stephen Beresford. Was it a film? A play? Was the raw, dramatic suspense of the piece lost on-screen? Were we supposed to clap at the end?? Amidst the bustling post-show crowd of the Byre’s bar, The Stand’s film critic, Mark Kersteen, and theatre reviewer, Joanna Alpern, discuss.

MK: So… what did you think?

JA: Yeah, I liked it. I was worried that the more subtle, intimate moments of awkward on-stage comedy would be difficult to communicate via film, but I think the mesh of live and recorded laughter from both Byre and National theatre audiences showed that this wasn’t a problem. And the close-ups were appreciated by some of the more elderly audience members, (‘it’s great – you can actually see the actors’ faces for once!’).

MK: I thought it was like watching one of those crummy pirated films that guys sell out of briefcases on street corners. You know, the ones where someone has just gone into a theatre and recorded the whole thing on their mobile phone. The spirit of the production seemed lost in a thousand little inconsistencies, and every time the filmed audience laughed and the living audience didn’t, it made a little part of me die inside. There’s just a power in live theatre, in watching real people speak real words, spit real spit and sweat real sweat right in front of you. When that’s taken away, you’re left with a seventies TV serial with better writing but a 3 hour runtime.

JA: Right… But surely you liked the play? I thought it was kind of like a modern-day, British Glass Menagerie with a twist, all set with a sexualised, overbearing mother (‘I want to be screwed quite forcefully!’), a fragile sister, a recklessly artistic, homosexual son, and the handsome ‘gentleman-caller’. Except with a nostalgia for the Swinging Sixties instead of the American South’s antebellum era, making sure to flaunt both the decade’s well-meaning and profound sense of social justice, alongside its irresponsible and largely aesthetic effects…

MK: It was more like a modern every-other-play-about-family-drama. Each character and plot element had a whiff of the recycled to it. Oh no, the family is fighting over the ancestral home! Oh no, the mother figure wants to reconcile with the kids she was a crappy parent to! Oh no, the gay brother is dashing but self-destructive! It felt… stale. Maybe not all mouldy, but less springy and flavourful than I would like.

And as much as I love bashing the Sixties (All those crushed dreams! You thought you were so cool with your long hair and your ideals and your going outside, didn’t you?), I didn’t find Beresford’s particular brand of anomie towards the sexiest decade that exhilarating. While boomers love to cling to that allegedly magical age, skepticism was already rife when Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe were writing, and that was during the Sixties.

JA: Okay, okay, maybe it wasn’t the most unique of ideas, but it carried its genre well – it was family drama at its best. The characters, though based on templates, were entertaining and believable. And I felt an overwhelming sympathy for Libby, played by Helen McCrory, whose ability to cry almost solidly for three hours with just a few moments of drought was quite exceptional. Julie Walters’ rendition of Judy Hausmann’s may have even surpassed my expectations. I liked her kind of vulgar, leering way of holding her mouth, a trait reminiscent of Catherine Tate’s ‘Nan’.

MK: Well, guess I’m going to have to diverge once again. Libby was too relentlessly shrewish for my taste, though I’ve got to give massive kudos to homegirl’s tear ducts. Julie Walters’ Judy Hausmann was amusing, but she did this really fake old-woman hunch when she walked around, and I couldn’t get past it. I’m just a stickler for posture. I did like Rory Kinnear as Nicky… He managed to play him as both charming and alarmingly hollow, as if he was a real person trying too hard to act like he’d just waltzed out of a Tennessee Williams show.

JA: And what about Stephen Beresford’s dialogue?? Surely you thought it was impressive how the mood could successfully bound back and forth between the tragic and the comic, and never took itself too seriously for too long?

MK: Yeah, okay, I’m right there with you on Beresford’s dialogue. Tragedy and comedy are my peanut butter and Nutella, and Beresford’s play is just a great big gooey sandwich of the stuff. I didn’t know whether to laugh or wince most of the time, and while that may result in a horrific facial expression, it’s definitely how I prefer to watch some theatre.

JA: You’re too hard to please. I would definitely recommend a ‘National Theatre Live’ screening at the Byre.

MK: You know what? I’d recommend it too, but maybe in 3D.

JA: …

If this cinematic-meets-dramatic experience tickles your fancy, be sure to catch the Byre’s next screening of the National Theatre’s live production of Timon of Athens on November 1st.