About time Arnold Wesker’s 1959 play had a proper production. It’s almost a history play now, but it has an urgent topicality. Wesker is writing about the freedom of the mind: the lifetime challenge of thinking for yourself and shaking off the prejudices of your class. Claire Brown is Beatie, the Norfolk girl, a little smug, but full of life, awakened, intellectually and sexually, by Ronnie, a bright young socialist in London. Ronnie is clearly a self-centred windbag, but he has taught Beatie how to be free, even at a price. Wesker is an English Clifford Odets: he teaches you to awaken and sing your own song. Jo Combes’s production, merciless but generous, is a boisterous homage to freedom.
Royal Exchange, Manchester