Review: The Be All And End All, York Theatre Royal

Jonathan Lewis's world premiere of the second play in his Education, Education, Education trilogy is likely to be divisive too. A metropolitan piece, set just before the Referendum vote that will divide the nation still more, it is all about chauvinistic, unprincipled Tory Junior Minister in the Home Office; his cancer-struck wife, who runs a multi-million blue chip company, and their wayward millennial son, whose way of dealing with parental pressure to acquire the two A stars he needs to gain entry to Trinity College, Cambridge, via his fee-paying school and private tutorials, is to self-harm and numb himself with drugs.

Before you say, "privileged posh people with first world problems", yes you are right, but since when should John Godber's Teechers (about a struggling comprehensive school) and Alan Bennett's The History Boys (about high-achieving Oxbridge-bound grammar school boys) be the be all and end all of discussions on the state of modern education? The middle class is expanding; York's universities have doubled in size, red-brick dormitories sprouting up everywhere, and education, like health and the Brexit blues, affects us all.

Lewis nudges us into his whirlwind play with sentimental childhood memories and observational wit, as underhand MP Mark (Lewis in his Jonathan Guy Lewis actor guise) and enervated wife Charlotte (real-life partner Imogen Stubbs) spar intellectually with 18-year-old Tom (Matt Whitchurch) and his ultra-bright, but very 17, girlfriend Frida (Robyn Cara), a scholarship girl from a Brazilian/Portuguese family, brought up by her limousine-driver father after her mother died.

They talk of semi-colons and rocket salad and cheese; they speak in Latin; Mark impersonates Boris; Charlotte picks up Frida for saying 'like"; Frida retorts by spotting a split infinitive. All this is happening in Natasha Bertram's design in one of those swanky grey, impersonal kitchens with ultra-modern gadgets, an open-plan stairway and only one picture: a painting, expensive, probably a Rothko.

Gradually, however, the darkness seeps through, the tide rises to drowning point, with Lewis asking, "Where would you draw the line", as Mark hatches a plan to cheat the exam system. The play moves into the realm of Spring Awakening, Chekhov, with psychological echoes of Hamlet in Tom, while being closer in chaos and (effluent) language to Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It than Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay's Yes, Minister

Post-interval, however, it is closer, too, to soap opera's tendency to furious histrionics, as Lewis throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Wife Charlotte even throws his phone into the kitchen sink grinder; she probably should have thrown him in there too.

By now, Lewis has brought in abortion; adultery; redundancy; Brexit; a nice Nurture versus Nietzsche gag; and amusing observations of teenage behaviour involving the fridge, recycling and text-speak. In some ways Lewis's comic touch is more assured than the drama, which could cut out one storyline in favour of a more in-depth examination of the central theme: how much should parents let their children just get on with it? When does guidance become overbearing pressure? Should expediency trump morality? Where do parents' expectations tally with a child's hopes? What is the price of love?

Big conflicts meet big ideas, and when each character faces rising turmoil in a babel of dysfunction, it becomes impossible to breathe. Damian Cruden is always at home directing plays with the punch of politics, turbulent characters and matters that really matter, and his cast responds with West End-standard performances.

After the noise and fury, signifying plenty, a mellifluous coda by Whitchurch's Tom, Chet Baker story, trumpet solo and all, establishes Lewis's key point for adults and children alike. We must all have our chance to sing our tune.

Marks out of ten? Seven.

The Be All And End All, York Theatre Royal, until May 19. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk