Stage review: The Habit Of Art, National Theatre

The Habit Of Art, Alan Bennett's wildly successful follow-up to his wildly successful The History Boys has a new cast to prepare for a national tour but the sonorous blast of the playwright is uninterrupted.

Bennett has plenty to say - about creativity, homosexuality, self-censorship and biography.

At the heart of the piece is an imagined meeting between the lascivious and irascible Auden and the prissy Benjamin Britten. The former embraces a decadent lifestyle of rent boys and chaos while the composer struggles to balance his predilections with his "national treasure" status.

In Nicholas Hytner's clever production, Bennett explores the dilemma through an intrusive contrivance. The actors play not only the two artists but the actors playing them for a stage adaptation. They are in rehearsal and flowing passages are broken by forgotten lines, niggles about motivation and the messy business of ego.

This framing device is no accident. Bennett explores the relationship between art, the artist and, of course, the habit of art. Whenever we are settled into a cosy two-hander of reunited friends, an interruption from the wings points out the underpinning, pulling back the curtain to reveal the levers and cogs of its construction.

Desmond Barrit lays siege to those parts of Auden's voluminous cardigan that he can hope to occupy and, within its folds, he brings about some remarkable transformations. If it were not clear from the subtext, he even wears an Auden mask complete with fissures and darkened baggy eyes.

This Auden is good value for money as he pees in the sink, orders up a rent boy and, as Fitz, the actor playing Auden, wonders whether it's all rather unseemly and wants to be done by 6pm for his lucrative Tesco voiceover.

Buttoned-up Benjamin Britten (Malcolm Sinclair) is the perfect counterbalance. He wrestles with the Death In Venice because its theme of the lust for a young boy touches close to home, and home is Aldeburgh where he is revered and loved as the avuncular benefactor.

Matthew Cottle's insecure biographer Humphrey Carpenter believes his role is pivotal - it is his imagination that brings the two dead souls back to life - but he fears he has become that dread fate for all actors - the theatrical Device. This is Bennett playing games in a work that has more levels than a Canary Wharf lift map.

Bennett has made his name delivering anxious aspirants fixated by status. Here, he is confident and unabashed, revelling in vulgarity and wisdom. This love song to the rude mechanics of art is a masterpiece from a writer who, unlike the protagonists he deftly skewers, is only ever gaining momentum.

– From July 2010