The little Finborough is a
disproportionately valuable component of the London theatre ecology.
Its programme combines new writing and revivals of neglected older
work, in selections which are intelligent and audacious. This
production of Howard Brenton’s 1976 play (originally the inaugural show
in the National’s Lyttelton house) is also valuable, though principally
as an example of why such exhumations do not always find a still-warm
dramatic body.
In my recent review of Ben Woolf’s
Angry
Young Man I noted that, only three years after its composition,
it’s a different world as regards eastern European immigrants in
Britain. How much truer is this in respect of the political and
industrial climate of 30 years ago! The world of Brenton’s play is one
of moderate to strong unionisation, a Labour Party that was still at
least partly credible as a repository of socialist values, young people
whose disrespect of elders had barely progressed beyond barbed banter
to the occasional explicit verbal insult, and “Parking on yellow lines
and knocking over old ladies in the parks” as core subjects of police
attention. This is not simply quaint; it is alien. Even those of us who
remember living among, and with, those values can no longer connect
feelingly when presented with this version of them.
The problem is that these values are one side of Brenton’s dramatic
equation. The activities and values of a bunch of workers who occupy a
potato crisp factory (but, having occupied it, do not run it) are
contrasted with those of one of their number, elderly odd-bod Josef
Frank, who turns out to have been a Czechoslovak government minister
purged in the show trials of 1952. (The real Josef Frank was hanged;
his fictional counterpart came to England.) Frank’s memories of his
struggles in government, experiences under torture and even a brief
non-monochrome sketch of Stalin are superimposed on his attempts in
1976 to avoid not just conflict, but being noticed at all, and his
frustrated responses to the uncomprehending young Trots. Brenton does
not shrink from showing both sides of a political conflict, but when
one of those sides is so absent from an audience’s experience and
understanding, the other side correspondingly loses the power of
contrast.
What remains is a committed central performance by Hilton McRae as
Frank, and a production by Nathan Curry which makes good use of the
Finborough space with a set composed of pallets and crates, but is
weaker with the actors and script especially as each character in turn
seems to get their set-piece speech about What It All Means To Them.
For Brenton’s engagement with contemporary political complexities, far
better watch the numerous episodes he has written of TV drama series
Spooks.
Written for the Financial
Times.