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Tamsin Greig and Jessica Raine in Gethsemane |
It’s New Labour as a garden party
GETHSEMANIE
National Theatre
OTHER than Shakespeare, no playwright has had more productions staged at the National Theatre than David Hare.
Eighteen of his plays and adaptations have stormed the South Bank.
But unlike his celebrated probes into political history – most recently The Permanent Way – Gethsemane, Hare insists, in strongly worded programme notes, “is based on pure fiction”. Whether this was following equally strongly worded legal advice remains unclear, but anyone with a basic understanding of the past 10 years of Labour Party history will recognise that at least three of his main characters bear a striking resemblance to Tony, Tessa and Lord Levy.
The play takes its name from the biblical garden setting where Jesus prayed before his crucifixion. According to the story, it was in the Gethsemane garden that Jesus was struck with second thoughts about the path he was taking, but realises he cannot go back and soldiers on.
Similarly, each of Hare’s character has their own Gethsemane moment. There is the Oxbridge graduate Mike Drysdale (Daniel Ryan), who joins the Labour Party for all the right reasons, only to wind-up wooing fat cats for the oh-so-shadowy fund-raising machine. Then there is the Home Secretary, Meredith Guest (Tamsin Greig) who, despite best intentions way back at the sunrise of the New Labour dawn, ends up following a similar fate when facing political oblivion. There is the Daily Mail hack who divests the Home Secretary’s 15-year-old daughter of classified information and her virginity in one fell swoop. He protests: “I didn’t choose this life. If I could go back I would. But I can’t.”
There is, the play suggests, no place for ideals in the New Labour utopia. And the sooner you realise that, as the millionaire Otto Fallon (Stanley Townsend) does, the better.
Enter Lori (Nicola Walker), the former school teacher who quits her job to follow her dream of busking on the Underground. She has risen above the element she lives in – but even in this vision of perfection, Hare instils a hint of despair. When the Home Secretary’s daughter Suzette – the stand-out performance of the night from Jessica Raine – pleads with Lori to cheer her up with a song, she cannot. In following her dreams, Lori has lost the joy of music.
So when will this madness end? The answer comes back: “When the money ends.” With that time apparently approaching, I wouldn’t bet against the short sellers of the City taking centre stage in Mr Hare’s 19th National Theatre production.
Until February 24
CNJ Booking line 0870 040 0070 |
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