I’m Not Running
National Theatre, London

SIR David Hare must be tidying up — sorting the papers on which he’s scribbled various ideas and lines over the past few years and, in an effort to prevent his material going to waste, has decided to amalgamate them into a production for the National.

[[{"type":"media","fid":"7539","view_mode":"inlineright","instance_fields":"override","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Old flames: Pauline Gibson (Sian Brooke) and Jack Gould (Alex Hassell) (Pic: Mark Douet)","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":""}]]His play, directed by Neil Armfield, is about the Labour Party. Except it’s also about the political outsider, as well as the NHS, alcoholism, domestic violence, mental health, immigration and why there’s never been a female Labour prime minister. Female genital mutilation gets a look in too.

Plays, of course, often contain several themes but each of the subjects broached gets such a fleeting mention, apparently just for the purpose of setting up a line Hare’s particularly proud of — “If there were a country in the world where 90 per cent of men were having their dicks cut off, don’t tell me they wouldn’t be sending gunboats,” might be one — that they leave us none the wiser before the plot hastily resumes.