Set in 1992, this is David Hare’s third play in a trilogy that combined with Racing Demon and Murmuring Judges as the vehicle with which he examined British society at the end of the 20th century. With exquisite timing before the looming general election, director Jeremy Herrin has resurrected this dissection of the Labour party’s soul in a quite brilliant Headlong, Rose Theatre and Sheffield Theatres production on a UK tour.
This is the sort of night at the theatre you live for – where writing, acting, set design, sound and casting combine to conjure an experience that takes you to a sealed place and forces the locks.
A personal friend of Neil Kinnock, Hare was allowed unprecedented access to Labour party meetings before the 1992 election that John Major eventually won. He was later surprised at the lack of reaction to the play from the Labour party itself, although in a review for The Independent, Gerald Kaufman described certain scenes as “so accurate as to be positively gruesome”. Labour’s nerves had no doubt been touched by Hare’s depiction of the homogenization of the left, with politically passionate individuals made to appear safely bland and where fear of saying the wrong thing was allowing the right to make off with the agendas. Hare believed that the Labour party became convinced that for its own electability it must not let people in on the arguments it was having with itself, with the result that the fight went out of its presentation. This is the absent ‘war’ that condemns George Jones in the play, and arguably did for Kinnock in ‘92.
The play starts with the wreath laying at the Cenotaph. Under the projected inscription ‘Our Glorious Dead’, and backlit against a whole back wall of pale grey light Labour leader George Jones steps forward. From this moment he becomes embroiled in the buttock-clenching promptings of his party’s PR machine in his attempts to outwit the Tories and win a snap election. Fox gives us a George Jones that is clearly compromised on every level as he attempts to be true to himself, whose corked emotions sometimes escape volcanically, but then falters painfully when trying to keep on message.
As Jones is prompted throughout by his inner coterie, Absence rolls out like an expletive-free version of The Thick Of It. Cyril Nri (Jones’s political adviser) does a wonderful job of portraying someone trying at all costs to stop a cat getting out of a bag. There are excellent performances from Gyuri Sarossy as leader-in-waiting Malcolm Price MP, and Charlotte Lucas as new PR guru Lindsay Fontaine. But the supporting roles were also brilliantly observed. Helen Ryan as veteran Labour stalwart Vera Klein held the auditorium with her inner musings about the lack of debate within the party and the virtues of common ownership and moral imperative. And Don Gallager played the toad-like Tory Prime Minister, Charles Kendrick and the probing broadcaster Linus Frank to perfection.
Mike Britton’s uncluttered and stylish set allowed the action to swing fast across the stage, for the most part using the whole back wall projected with colours, with the occasional roll-out of TV monitors and desks, and later a conference rostrum to great effect. Tom Gibbons’ sound helped build tension and gave scenes additional punctuation.
This is a production at the top of its game. For those on the left, the play gives clarity to the strictures the political game imposes upon its protagonists. But it also sends out a warning that simply being Tory-lite is not enough to galvanise a majority for post New Labour. Highly recommended. ★★★★★ Simon Bishop 11/03/15 at Bristol Old Vic
