ONE of the many hopes for the nascent National Theatre of Scotland is that it will strengthen casting. There are some fine actors resident in Scotland.

But there are a lot more who have gone forth, from Ewan McGregor to Denis Lawson, whom theatregoers, and perhaps equally importantly those who are not currently theatregoers, would love to see on the stages of Scotland.

So this production of John Osborne’s epoch-making play, which brings David Tennant, lately of the BBC’s Blackpool but with a string of other television, film, National Theatre and RSC credits, back home, could be seen as something of a preview.

Happily, one’s immediate reaction is that if the new National Theatre is going to do much better than this co- production between the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and the Theatre Royal in Bath, it is going to have to go some.

Tennant is everything Jimmy Porter needs to be, odious but irresistible, idle but driven, angry but powerless, selfimportant but self-loathing.

Endless energy leaks from every inch of his long, lean, angular frame which he throws like a weapon around Monika Nisbet’s perfect recreation of the Porters’ shabby Midlands bedsit.

Tennant’s performance is matched in the other four parts. Alexandra Moen is particularly fine as Helena, her disdain flipping over into lust.

After the first-act confrontation, their faces inches apart, when she threatens to slap his face in defence of her friend Alison — Jimmy’s wife — and he threatens to slap her right back, there is only one possible destination for their relationship. And, as Alison, Kelly Reilly’s final speech, mourning the loss of her child, broke more than Jimmy’s heart on the first night.

Looking back through the prism of almost half a century at a play which supposedly captured a moment in social history, it is, as many noted of the National Theatre revival five years ago, the human drama rather than the class warfare which now resonates most.

Class has hardly disappeared from the lexicon of British life, of course, nor can one imagine today’s shopping malls or old films on TV assuaging Jimmy’s Sunday afternoon ennui.

But it is that human drama which in Richard Baron’s expertly constructed, naturalistic production makes such a good case for this being a play for all time, not just its own time.

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