Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

On paper, it doesn’t sound funny at all. A satire about Soviet-era repression featuring two men in a cell. One of them is a schizophrenic, the other a political prisoner who goes on hunger strike rather than corrupt his principles.

Yet from the moment disturbed Alexander Ivanov – played by the charismatic Toby Jones (Infamous, Frost/Nixon) – embarks on the first of his surreal dialogues, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour sparkles with wit and irony.

Scripted by leading playwright Tom Stoppard, EGBDF also features a score by Andre Previn. As the brainchild of two such luminaries, you might expect it to be good. What is hard to believe is just how much it packs into an interval-less 65 minutes.

Jones’ Ivanov relates everything to music. His illness is to be obsessed with a symphony orchestra which no other character sees or hears, but which swells and soars in response to his flights of fancy.

The audience, on the other hand, can’t miss the orchestra – they are spread over most of the stage. How often do you see two or three actors squeezed into a small – in fact, cell-like – space surrounded by 39 classical musicians?

The orchestra doesn’t just provide the music, its use as a device demonstrates just how clever and original this production is. The patient first emerges playing along with a triangle. Later, he runs through them, around them, greeting old friends and hugging the conductor. His disappointment at their performance inspires humour. His doctor asks him: ‘Did the pills help at all?’ Ivanov replies: ‘I don’t know, what pills did you give them?’

As befits a play inspired by a real-life meeting between Previn and a Soviet dissident, the play also has a serious message.

The second inmate, played by Joseph Millson, is also called Alexander Ivanov. This one is caught in a Catch 22 situation. He is sane but is confined to a lunatic asylum because he claims the state puts sane people into lunatic asylums. They will only release him if he admits to being cured of a mental illness he doesn’t have. Dissident Ivanov is prepared to starve to death rather than give in.

Bryony Hannah puts in an engaging performance as the distraught son who visits his shaven-headed, emaciated father to beg him to give up his cause and return home. And there’s more to praise too, including the dynamic staging.

Yes, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour has it all. Humour and pathos. Brilliant words and evocative music. An idea which sounds bizarre at first but ends up striking the perfect note.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is showing until February 25

National Theatre
South Bank
SE1 9PX

Box office: 020 7452 3000