It is set in England before, during, and after the 1997 general elections, which resulted in New Labour's landslide victory and in Tony Blair becoming prime minister.
Will and Claire are typical children of the 1960s: They had their socialist and Marxist ideals and, a couple back then, rebelled against The Establishment and, generally, tried to fight for what they considered the right causes.
When the play opens she is having an affair with Ben, a young man her age who works in the phone centre of some courier service.
Hugh has become a bestselling author under the nom de plume of Alice Wilde, writing popular novels where "something happens in every paragraph" (Will).
Early in May 1997, at Hugh's flat, they all come together to have an election party (with the TV turned off), clinging to what has been left of their left-wing ideals and reminiscing about the old days.
During that election party Claire, high on pot, talks about her fling with Hugh way back in the 1970s—an affair Will knew about and (willy-nilly) approved of but which is news to the horrified Frankie.
It turns out that Claire's life has not been easy: She has been held responsible for the deaths of a group of freedom fighters in Africa who, as she claims, acted against her instructions and who were shot by enemies.
As far as her private life is concerned, she admits that she has been chasing a French doctor across half the continent, but in the end he found someone else.
In order not to have to admit that he is unwilling to be a father again, he is even prepared to pay £2,000 for artificial insemination (IVF).
In his appealing comedy of disillusion and disappointment, Hughes sets his sights upon three lapsed Lefties for whom the middle-aged pursuit of love, and particularly young lovers, has replaced politics.
His 90-minute play is far more a light comedy of sexual and social manners, made piquant by the gulf between the generations, than it is political elegy."
"Utterly slick and relentlessly determined to entertain, Helpless, a new play by Dusty Hughes at the Donmar Warehouse, lives solely on the surface.
They have flamboyant entrance lines in which they draw attention to themselves and deliver more plot exposition than is sane; they go in for longer-than-long conversations of oneliners (like endless tennis rallies between players you don't care about); they do a great deal of speaking at cross-purposes.
Worst, in a play about different kinds of liberal socialists between the late 1990s and today, the unspontaneous soundbite artificiality of the way they talk just sounds like so much spin."