Forget popcorn, Pearl and Dean, and usherettes with torches. In my mind, the moment a play begins simply cannot be bettered. That anticipatory thrill; that exact second that the lights dim, the conversation ceases and, these days, a witty carillon of mobile ringtones is played to remind everyone to turn their phone off. There's a hesitation, and then the audience cranes forward and the curtain rises. This month, the pre-show atmosphere at the National has been keener than ever for Mike Leigh's new play. This is largely because the writer/director refused, as is his wont, to indicate what it was about: it was titled only a couple of weeks ago.
The programme for Two Thousand Years was equally sphinx-like, containing only production photos and biographical details, yet such is Leigh's status, and such was the excitement about his first theatrical foray for 11 years, that the 20-week run is a sell-out. At the previews, it was reported that people were queuing for returns from 6am.
So what's it all about? First, Leigh bombards us with so many middle-class tropes that we almost suffocate in its Bodened-out atmosphere. We have the Guardian, shoes off in the house, wood-strip flooring, postgraduate kids still living at home, and the ability to name-drop Kofi Annan without fearing that not everyone will get the reference.
Leigh presents us with three generations of a secular, left-leaning Jewish family, where Mum was raised on a kibbutz and Dad is a north London dentist. Everyone can speak Hebrew. However, when Josh, the son, starts wearing a skullcap, lighting the candles on Friday night (because Mum won't) and repairing to the conservatory to pray, parents and Grandpa are horrified.
Over this framework Leigh balances a dialectic: should one live without ostentatious rules and regulations (as the parents would have it), or within tightly constricted guidelines (as grumpy Josh advocates)? Is human responsibility up to the state or the individual? For the first half, this question is posed at the wider world; there's a lot of Guardian-waving and Bush-quoting around the sofa. After the interval, the comedy hots up when Michelle, the sister who has just turned 40, and whom no one has seen for 11 years, arrives and punctures the status quo with her needle-thin four-inch heels. Michelle is a Mike Leigh classic nightmare: more caricature than character, a charmless City hag who cries and cackles in equal measure. Why Leigh finds these hideous roles much easier to write for women than his (typically sad and misunderstood) men is a moot point, but Samantha Spiro has a great time with the role.
At which point, for all its references to Katrina and north London parking restrictions, Two Thousand Years abandons its contemporary leanings and develops a thumping biblical yearning. But the prodigal is not the spoilt Michelle, although she would dearly like it to be. It is the sullen Josh, who at the end of the drama has removed his skullcap and is sitting in the corner of the living room playing chess with his father. The pair are lit by the warm glow of family harmony. Alongside the Ikea standard lamp. Quite how Leigh has made us travel together to reach this moving, yet thoroughly satisfying, denouement is one of the remaining mysteries of the evening.
