There’s a lot more to Chris Thompson’s play than meets the eye. Your natural first thought is that setting a play about the rise of the British political far right in a karaoke pub, and having every scene centred on a belted-out number, is bleedin’ ridiculous, and the aim must be to burlesque the ideas involved. In fact, the opposite is true, and the setting and structure act as a well-crafted Trojan horse to get to places that the market leaders don’t reach, as the bleach ads say.
    
Thompson’s protagonist Jayson is gay, illustrating that today’s extremists aren’t straightforward neo-fascists. The group led by Jayson’s brother Paul has a black British deputy leader and Jayson himself has a British Asian boyfriend, to emphasise claims that the issue is now immigration and culture rather than race; however, when tensions rise towards the end, old ways of speaking and thinking re-emerge to confirm that after all it’s just the same bigotry in fancy clothes. The fancy clothes are turns of phrase and presentational devices introduced by Christine, learnt during her days as a social worker before she was sacked as a scapegoat in a Rotherham-like child abuse case.
    
Here and elsewhere, Thompson suggests that there are indeed legitimate concerns, and that that phrase isn’t just a politicians’ euphemism for not daring to disagree with their stupider voters. Immigrants jumping the queue for social housing may be a myth, but things grow much more uncomfortable when Natalie Casey as Christine says of the girls in her brief, “We were racist… we were racist against those white girls.” Casey is also the strongest musical performer in director Ria Parry’s cast, though Tony Clay’s Jayson has the skill to be plausibly bad and it fits the character of Paul that Steve John Shepherd lets energy and commitment stand in for accuracy and flair.
    
The play is too baggy in places. Jayson and Paul’s murdered soldier sister could easily remain offstage, as could Christine’s former teenage “case” Leanne, though that would leave Christine the sole woman present. And when the sophisticated arguments do break down and, as with most extremist organisations, the ideologues are edged out by the zealots, much of the care in the writing dissipates as well, leaving us hurtling towards the obligatory destination in an unadorned, almost perfunctory way.
    
Written for the Financial Times.