Mrs Delgado is a play about what is happening in homes and workplaces around the nation as I write. It’s hard to avoid a cliché like ‘timely’ with Mike Bartlett’s play, but the amused ripples of recognition that ran through the universally masked audience at the Ustinov were of newly minted currency; these are the topics aired around the water coolers and coffee machines today. The eponymous Mrs Delgado, a woman in her eighties, is a lockdown rules flouter. The younger, thirty two year old Helen, has been observing Mrs Delgado from her rear window with growing irritation. Helen is a stickler for observing the guidelines. Thus are the lines drawn, apparently across an age divide and divergent views of social responsibility. Mrs Delgado hugs people she barely knows and, against all government advice, arranges a street party in the middle of a pandemic. Helen denies herself sex out of public duty.
Like many a one act, one-person play, it’s a story with little or no physical action, relying on our imaginations and the skill of the storyteller to whisk us out of the theatre. Last night the story was narrated by a seated yet animated Ellen Robertson. Ms Robertson, tousled and lambent, gives a distinctive voice to each of the two characters as well as the sundry street folk – delivery men and the like who are peeped through her curtains. She effects the changes seamlessly, like one suffering from multiple personality disorder, being clearly at home in each of them.
Those who have come to the theatre with a strong view on one side of the debate or the other hoping for a killer blow for their camp will be disappointed. It is the strength of Mr Bartlett’s story that battle honours are even. The battleground is that laid out by John Stuart Mill in his suggestion that the greatest tyranny is the tyranny of the majority over the minority. What are the limits of the state in restricting our autonomy? Whose idea of what is right is the correct one? Like many a political commentator Mr Bartlett seems to think this is an insoluble conundrum for democracy, which can only be resolved at the personal level by accommodation and understanding. Mrs Delgado’s autonomy is apparently in conflict with the public good, but Helen’s idea of what constitutes the public good is precisely the issue. The play finishes with the first buds of a friendship, which if not a clear answer to the problem at least points the way to a solution.
When cleverly crafted scripting is combined with fine and engaging acting an hour in a darkened theatre is an hour of delight.
★★★★☆ Graham Wyles 21st January
