James Graham’s new West End play, *The Standard of Living*, explores John Maynard Keynes’s ideas and personal life during the period between the two world wars. The Guardian argues that its focus on state intervention, public investment and resistance to laissez-faire economics is highly relevant as Andy Burnham’s government prepares its first budget and debates how to generate growth.

The article links Keynes’s era to today’s aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, rising nationalism, declining living standards and concerns over unregulated artificial intelligence. Starring Rory Kinnear as Keynes and directed by Nicholas Hytner, the play uses his marriage, Bloomsbury connections and rivalry with free-market economist Friedrich Hayek—including a dance sequence—to examine how society can balance markets with the common good.