“What is a good life?” This axiological question, asked earnestly in the opening lines of James Graham’s The Standard of Living – playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 12 – is often overlooked by the fractured and hyper-specialised discipline of economics. Yet for John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas motivated the ‘Keynesian revolution’ towards government intervention into the economy during the mid-20th century, it was the core motivation underpinning his life’s work. To Keynes, this so-called ‘good life’ is one replete with art and human connection, wherein the value of work lies in the leisure which it affords. However, Keynes’ dogged refusal to accept the state of the world tells us that, perhaps more fundamentally, a ‘good life’ is one characterised by a radical imagining of what a ‘better life’ might entail, and a tireless striving towards its realisation.
This ethical framework seizes The Standard of Living, turning what might have become a dull affair about aggregate demand and the death of laissez-faire into a colourful portrait of a remarkable man. The play flits between Keynes’ bohemian life as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and his attempts to influence the British government to intervene in the economy across two world wars and the Wall Street Crash. Throughout, Keynes’ deployment of economic theory is portrayed as an act of profound artistic expression, akin to the literature of Virginia Woolf or the painting of Vanessa Bell (fellow members of the Bloomsbury Group). Keynes’ affinity to the arts, which saw him found the Arts Council of Great Britain shortly before his death in 1946, is reflected in the incorporation of paintings by Cézanne and Degas into the stage design. Additionally, the frenzied ballet numbers which mark scene transitions foreshadow his marriage to the ballerina Lydia Lopokova (much to the shock of his friends and colleagues, who believed him to be homosexual).
Rory Kinnear plays a reserved yet charming Keynes, providing glimpses of the charisma which convinced Douglas LePan to describe him as “the most beautiful creature I have ever listened to”. However, Natalia Osipova steals the show, in her theatre debut on sojournment from the Royal Ballet, playing a sharp, witty, and comedically Russian Lydia Lopokova. The highlight of the play is the meeting between Keynes and his great rival, the proto-neoliberal Friedrich Hayek, on the roof of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. The almost unbelievably true encounter sees Keynes and Hayek on fire warden duty during a Nazi bombing raid, still arguing the merits of their respective worldviews. The pair meet again during a feverish tango scene which places Hayek’s “we must tighten our belts” against Keynes’ “buy a new belt”. Other standout performances include Pip Carter’s drippingly sardonic Lytton Strachey, a fellow member of the Bloomsbury Group and a former lover of Keynes, and Laurie Kynaston’s Hayek, whose thin veneer of self-confidence masks both a bitter ideological resentment of Keynes the economist, and a deep personal admiration for Keynes the man.
Those searching for a deep engagement with the economic arguments for and against government intervention in the free market may find themselves disappointed (much to the relief of the rest of us). Cursory context is provided regarding the debate between Keynes and Hayek, typically followed by a quip from a less economically –minded character about just how complicated it all is, reassuring the audience that the graphs and equations espoused by these characters are not at all the point of the play. Rather, the fundamental tension between Keynes and Hayek is captured in their differing worldviews, which shape the research they produce. Keynes’ good-natured belief in the capacity of governments to influence the world for the better, and the importance he places on leisure and the ‘good life’, stands in stark contrast with the cynical zealotry of Hayek, who draws on his experience of the hyperinflation in 1920s Vienna to justify his distrust of central bank interventions. Therefore, although Graham seemingly writes Keynes to be the ‘hero’ of the story (if there even is such a thing), this should not necessarily be taken as an endorsement of his economic ideas, but rather a simple admiration for his uncompromising style of living, and the way in which it shaped his life’s work.
Therefore, by highlighting the virtue inherent to Keynes’ radical imagination of a better life for all, influenced by his deep personal engagement with the moral philosophy of fellow Cambridge ‘Apostle’ G.E. Moore, The Standard of Living stands as a philippic against the state of political and economic thought today, implicitly lamenting those who sacrifice ideology and philosophy at the altar of pragmatism and incremental change. Morgan McSweeney’s pragmatism-over-principle may have achieved the largest British electoral victory this century, but it was this same lack of philosophical imagination which doomed Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership from the start. Through his exploration of John Maynard Keynes in The Standard of Living, James Graham implores us to not repeat these mistakes, but rather to learn from the ethos embodied by Keynes. By doing this, we might just be able to imagine a better way to live.
