Theatre / The National have bungled their Rishi Sunak satire
The Estate begins with a typical NHS story. An elderly Sikh arrives in A&E after a six-hour wait for an ambulance and he’s asked to collect his own vomit in an NHS bucket. The doctors tell him he’s fine and sends him home where he promptly dies. His only son, Angad, inherits all his property, which irritates his two daughters, who receive nothing. The personality of the dead Sikh is left deliberately obscure.
Newspapers in Britain and India publish glowing accounts of his achievements but his youngest daughter calls him ‘a slum landlord’ who owed his fortune to ‘a lifetime of tax-evasion’. The bad-tempered tussle over his will takes place in Angad’s west London mansion, owned by his mega-rich wife who supports the decision to withhold cash from the greedy sisters. Both women are already loaded and they want a chunk of Angad’s cash to pay for Botox injections and private school fees. Gosh, it’s hard work watching this pack of spoilt brats wrangling about money they don’t need and didn’t earn.
All the characters were privately educated and the script is crammed with references to Oxford colleges and obscure public-school rituals. The dialogue of the sisters........
© The Spectator
