Dear Octopus

My evening started with a mad dash to get out of work and into town in time for this week’s theatre at the NT, this time for a revival of Dodie Smith’s 1930’s family drama.  It was lovely to bump into an old friend outside - that moment of confusion when you hear your name and can't see where it is coming from and wonder if you have misheard, then that sudden recognition!   In the theatre, the seats were the cheap ones third row from the front which are usually fine, but with two tall men in front of us, we knew we were in for some ducking and diving - one of them had the grace to apologise for being tall, although he didn't offer to swap seats unfortunately.

 As usual I knew little about this play beforehand and so I was on the lookout in the first half for the twist, or hidden secret or grudge that was going to turn it around* and then I realised that actually, there wasn’t going to be any sharp edge or clever reveal.  Instead this is a slow but detailed examination of a family with all of its inside jokes, petty bickering and rivalries, but underpinned with love.  Set some time after the First World War but with its shadow still looming, this is a family which has known loss, and, at least in this production there is the dark cloud of the next war hanging overhead.  But the world and its traumas are very deliberately kept outside by Dora and the family, the 'Octopus' of the title.  

I read in the the programme that the first production of this was in 1938 as the Munich crisis was in progress, so, a warm and reassuring evening in the company of great performances in a traditionally well made play about a realistic, 'normal' family must have been very appealing in the midst of a sense of things coming to an end; Although, this 'normal' family is clearly very middle class and still has live in staff.  Leaving that aside, there are plenty of charms to be had once I let go of any expectation of anything a bit more hard hitting.  I was slightly worried that I identified rather too much with Lindsay Duncan’s matriarch instead of one of the four younger generations on the stage, but a little bit of recognition that life is to be lived now in the moment, at whatever age you are felt a very good message to take away into the night.  

 *At the interval, forgetting this is from the 1930s, we were speculating on secret children brought up by other brothers and sisters, secret affairs, some shocking wartime event, and particularly whether Nicholas, the golden son, is closeted; but none of that in this story.  

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