Rory Kinnear Brings Economist Keynes to the West End

Rory Kinnear plays John Maynard Keynes in The Standard of Living, James Graham's new play now running at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. The production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, brings economic theory to the West End stage and connects it with art and fulfilment in what reviewers describe as a polished, ravishingly staged production.

Not everyone will know that the Bloomsbury group counted a jobbing economist among its members — one with superstar status and a firm belief in capitalism. Keynes may not have cut a very bohemian picture in his three-piece suit, but the foremost thinker of economic policy in 20th-century Britain was also, according to the Guardian's review, "a card-carrying art lover, avant-gardist and bisexual who had affairs with Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant, hanging out with the gang at their nerve-centre in Charleston."

Kinnear plays him with equal measures of old-school reserve and charm. The actor, long established as one of Britain's leading stage performers, gives the Bloomsbury economist what the review calls "bags of charm" in a role that requires him to carry a play about economic policy.

The gamble of the material is real. Graham, the state-of-the-nation writer behind some of Britain's most successful political dramas, audaciously takes economic theory into commercial theatre. The review identifies the subject matter as a "high-wire act", one leavened by the playwright's "remarkable facility to balance British social history and complex political ideas with speed, sparkle and a humorous lightness of touch."

That balance defines the evening. Graham's high-wire writing, as the review frames it, makes economic theory legible without dumbing it down, and ties it to questions of art and a life well lived — concerns that animated Keynes himself, who moved between the Treasury and the drawing rooms of Charleston's avant-garde circle.

The production itself draws praise for its staging. The Guardian calls it "polished" and "ravishingly staged", credit that belongs to Hytner's direction and a design team working at the top of West End form.

For Graham, the play continues a run of work that has made him the closest thing British theatre has to a house chronicler of the state. For Kinnear, it adds another major stage role to a career built on precisely this kind of verbal agility. The Standard of Living suggests that the economist's ideas — about prosperity, art and what a good economy is for — still have traction with a West End audience.