Ben and Imo – Orange Tree Theatre, London

Writer: Mark Ravenhill

Director: Erica Whyman

Mark Ravenhill’s character-driven two-hander Ben and Imo, subtly directed by Erica Whyman, garnered solid praise in its Royal Shakespeare Company production last year. Set in a wet, stormy coastal town and imbued with a sense of suffocating repression, the piece transfers neatly into the claustrophobic environs of the Orange Tree Theatre. Lashings of discursive dialogue betray the piece’s origins —a Radio 3 play back in 2013. Two fine performances and some caustic Ravenhillish humour make for a hugely enjoyable if a tad overlong evening.

It is September 1952. Flawed, bullying composer Benjamin Britten (Samuel Barnett) stands pressed by time, the weight of a crown, and his self-reverential sense of genius upon his shoulders. He has nine fleeting months to give birth to a dark, daring new opera, Gloriana, to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II. He would prefer not to have to do it, but self-regard, a public school sense of duty, and an inability to say no mean he is committed to the project. A tempestuous soundscape of winds, howling rain, and stormy seas communicates Ben’s emotional state as he creates. Thankfully, Whyman does not over-egg what might be an altogether too obvious metaphor with the sound design.

Enter Imogen (Victoria Yeates), daughter of composer Gustav “Gussie” Holst, and a talented musician in her own right. She is there as Ben’s musical assistant. “I want you to tell me what I want to do”, he demands of her. “When one works with a genius, it’s the genius who sets the pace”, she assures him. That means in practice, Imo’s role shifts between collaborator, nanny, mother figure, “dim-witted servant-girl”, and emotional punching bag, all according to Ben’s whims.

“I’m a getting-on-with-things sort of person” is Imo’s initial 1950s stiff upper lip response to Ben’s increasingly capricious and often cruel behaviour. Being drama, an emotional reckoning between these two soon beckons. We have to wait a while and enjoy some extended excursions on the way, but when the showdown comes, sparks fly.

Is Ben and Imo simply another retelling of a familiar story: a steadfast, capable woman, who lacks opportunities, tiptoeing around the stormy brilliance of a troubled male genius? At one level, yes, it is. Anticipate two and a bit hours (plus an interval) of two posh people drinking too much, saying bright things, and engaging in more or less mannered bickering.

Yet Ravenhill, always preoccupied with what makes people tick, is an acute observer of character. Ben and Imo share a love for music, and in a platonic way, they love each other. Neither likes other people very much. The composer’s confessed love for his unseen lifelong partner Peter reeks of possessiveness and territoriality. What drives both Ben and Imo is a shared sense of asphyxiation in the face of 1950s oppression (he is a closeted gay man, and she is a woman in a man’s world), and a determination to get the job done, come what may. He thinks it takes angsty tantrums for his genius to fly; she thinks “only a jolly big hug will get the job done”. The goal is the same.

Barnett’s prim, petulant, waspish Ben has his shoulders hunched forward, knees drawn together, and hands clasped tight: a barely suppressed cauldron of fissile rage ready to ignite, which he does often and unpredictably. “Fuck the ballet, fuck Kenneth Clark, and fuck them all” he declaims when organisers threaten to move Gloriana’s opening date. “Poor Vaughan Williams, so old and still so second-rate,” he spits when professional comparisons are threatened. There is insight, even vulnerability, here, too. Immersed in depression, Ben assures himself that he writes sublime music, just as he laments his inability to pen even “one good tune” (think a reverse Andrew Lloyd-Webber).

Yeates’s spinsterish Imo is a tremendous counterpoint to Ben: a fizzling bundle of positivity, determined to make the most of things through hard work and application. The character’s frustrated ambitions as a composer might be seen as the silent tragedy of the play, but one senses this is not how she sees it. “You’re a composer, I can make arrangements, I’m not special enough”, she says. This is not just frivolous flattery to calm a spoilt, manipulative manchild, which Ben certainly is. Imo is too sensible for that: this is an honest appraisal of how she sees herself and her role. This is dignity and resolve, not tragedy.

Conor Mitchell’s intelligent, pared-back music, piano inspired by chords from Gloriana, adds depth to scene transitions. Whyman has Ben and Imo constantly reposition the furniture on Soutra Gilmour’s suitably dowdy 1950s set, a metaphor perhaps for the duo’s continual rearrangement and reworking of the musical score. A revolving grand piano sits centre stage, emblematic of the most crucial thing in these two characters’ lives: music.

Runs until 17 May 2025