To Have and To Hold – Hampstead Theatre, London

Writer: Richard Bean

Directors: Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson

To Have and To Hold is a domestic comedy about “dealing with ageing parents who don’t want to be dealt with.”

In the small and humorously named Yorkshire village of Wetwang, Jack (Alun Armstrong), a ninety-one-year-old former policeman waits to die. He spends most of his time having circular arguments with his wife, Florence (Marion Bailey). The couple are stranded, they can no longer drive into town to do their shopping and are cut off from the modern world without the internet. Their children have grown up and moved away but have come back to their parent’s house to discuss the future.

Realism is the core that runs through To Have and to Hold and there’s great attention to detail in the set, the script and the performances. James Cotterill’s set is the living room of a 1960s semi-detached house. The wallpaper is the right level of faded flowers, the two armchairs look suitably sat in and the sofa for the guests suitably uncomfortable. Each drawer, each ornament and each picture fully evokes a once house-proud couple that have remained stuck in time. The kitchen even has a hatch, which punctuates many of the jokes. The sun rises through the windows stage-left in full autumnal yellowness, growing paler for the scenes in midday.

The script has a similar attention to detail. The elderly parents speak in Yorkshire accents, as do their helpful neighbour, ‘Rhubarb Eddie’ (Adrian Hood) and niece, Pamela (Rachel Dale). The two grown-up children, Rob (Christopher Fulford) and Tina (Hermione Gulliford) speak in RP accents. Most of the jokes are ones of miscommunication. Some of these are between the different dialects but the best set pieces are between Jack and Florence. Bean describes this communication as ‘the prosaic elevated to clowning’ and anyone who has suffered an elderly relative trying to remember the name of an actor in a film will feel a wave of recognition immediately.

Armstrong plays a once powerful but now decrepit man with a cantankerous steel which prevents him from becoming pathetic, although he is fond of playing his age for sympathy. As his wife, Bailey rarely sits for long, offering everybody tea and needing to get up to unlock the front door for each visitor. Theirs is a love which is played out in arguments but manages to convey the fact that they couldn’t last long without each other.

Fulford and Gulliford’s characters seem lesser than their parents. They are both successful in their fields but seem less connected, something they accept as a part of modern life. This is contrasted with their parents, who are bereft by their shrinking social circle and keep reminding each other of friends who have died. Jack and Florence may be analogue beings in a digital world, but their experiences seem deeper and more strongly felt, particularly in the stories Jack tells of his time as a police officer.

While the family reunion is initially tense and stilted, with each of the characters assuming viewpoints held by the others, it’s not long before the family dynamic asserts itself. While cousin Pamela may passive-aggressively scold Rob and Tina for abandoning their parents, the underlying family bonds of love, irritation and shared identity are too strong to stay asleep for long.

Although To Have and To Hold does have regular laughs, the principal reaction is one of recognition. It’s a quietly powerful reminder to hold on to our family relationships and to cherish them at every stage – and there’s a great story about a Cornish pasty.

Runs until 25 November 2023