Cast

Synopsis

George is a (not so convinced) socialist MP who is constantly assessing and evaluating, analysing and theorising about anything and everybody and about his own views and reactions to life’s events. This complete absorption in himself and his world makes him blind to the needs of his wife, family and friends and deaf to their (silent) cries for his love and affection, understanding and sympathy. Alan Bennett’s characters are so real, so rounded, so familiar you feel you are eavesdropping on neighbours.

Directors Notes

Getting On is a meticulously detailed study of a Labour MP ten years into his second marriage who feels tethered in a time of change; distrustful on the one hand of the unsettled mentality of the young and, on the other, of the encroaching crossroads of life of the
middle-aged. Not liking people very much, he is their elected representative, who can look forward to nothing more than the fairly imminent end of a not very interesting road.

Written by local playwright Alan Bennett, ‘Getting On’ was first produced at the Queen’s Theatre, London, in October 1971. Twenty two years on – and we have experienced the Berlin wall come down, the Falkland Islands war, the Tienamin Square massacre, Earthquakes, eruptions, global warming forecasts and air disasters to name but a few. And, of course, a change of party in government.

Have our social barriers disintegrated, our horizons altered, our views broadened? Has our knowledge expanded since those swinging sixties when skeletons came out of cupboards and bras were burned? Yes, perhaps, maybe, no. Select an answer. Yet in 1993 we are still shocked when MP’s misbehave, when Aids threatens our future existence, when communications break down between states, countries, diplomats, religions, law and order, husband and wife. father and son.

Why do such things happen? What can we do? It’s just a matter of getting on – with the job, with personal ambition life. When one barrier comes down another will take its place. That’s history. We just hope the unspeakable never Happens. To us anyway.