More to be said: Lungs at the Old Vic
Lungs
Old Vic
Baylis Circle A32, £20
25 October 2019
Old Vic page
Without having seen The Crown I somewhat stupidly missed the significance of casting Claire Foy and Matt Smith in Duncan Macmillan’s two-hander of a couple contemplating parenthood in a world of crisis. No matter. As it was I found the evening pretty entertaining and all well enough, even if Macmillan doesn’t make the most of the opportunity his subject affords.
Director Matthew Warchus and designer Rob Howell give an empty stage. Foy and Smith suggest the necessary props in a largely natural and unforced manner. Interventions in lighting by Tim Lutkin and sound by Simon Baker (what a male-heavy lineup) establish scene changes. Such an approach seems closely aligned with Macmillan’s rapid-fire muse but without having read the play cold I might just be responding to slick design choices. I wonder what Katie Mitchell did in her production.
I can see why it made sense to revive Lungs now, especially with Foy and Smith on board. A lot has significantly not changed since the play’s premiere in 2011: the environmental catastrophe continues, we’re still not doing anything about it, and babies are still born. But I wonder if Macmillan’s treatment felt more sophisticated in 2011. While depressingly little in the big picture of our climate response has moved on, there is for good or ill a lot more discourse to access about it. In this context the discussions between Foy and Smith feel naive, and the play’s final-act hurtle into a disastrous future poorly established. There’s a lot more to say about the responsibility of birth in a time of crisis than Lungs says. And that would be fine, were Macmillan not so clearly devoted to using his art to discuss the big stuff.
There were a few other more minor things I didn’t like. Foy does her best but the female character rings tinny, problematic in writing where the whole effect, in this production at least, rests on a semblance of everyman verisimilitude. And while I can see it makes sense for Macmillan to shear the play of any reference to specific time or place, this combined with the slightly uneasy writing for the female character engenders an unmoored distance, the story drifting noncommittally free of the society it claims to critique.
But again, no matter. It’s of course a good thing to have a play at least in some part responding to the significance of the climate crisis, and for it to be slickly produced, and to have a competent and starry cast enthusiastically received by a packed theatre.
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