(dir: Max Roberts, w: Michael Chaplin)
This adaptation of Chris Mullin's diaries, jointly commissioned by Live Theatre and New Writing North, is an ambitious piece of theatre that seeks to provide a partial but panoramic impression of the New Labour era. Both diaries published to date are covered, spanning 1999-2010; Mullin's words are adapted pretty much verbatim. It could almost be 'epic theatre' with its historical emphasis and use of a small cast of five to play a gallery of 58 characters, including many familiar from recent political history. As adaptor Michael Chaplin states in the programme, the diaries 'will enlighten history students of future generations.'
It has particular resonance being performed in the north-east, as Mullin was a prominent back-bench MP for the Sunderland South constituency, who particularly specialised in Home Affairs and his dogged campaigning partially led to the release of the Birmingham Six in 1991 following a miscarriage of justice. It should also be noted that the sixty year-old Chaplin is the son of Sid Chaplin (1916-1986), that great chronicler of life in County Durham pit villages - a writer of short-stories, novels and several episodes of the TV series, When the Boat Comes In.
This play provides an insight into how an average politician sees the world; how he perceives himself, his political 'superiors' and his constituents. The likes of Tony Blair (referred to as 'The Man'), Gordon Brown, George Osborne, Nicholas Soames, Cherie Blair, John Prescott, Robin Cook, Dennis Skinner and Jeremy Paxman are vividly realised by the small cast.
Mullin is played as a self-deprecating anti-hero; a trustworthy, observant everyman, who documents the complexities of the political scene around him. As he notes in the programme: 'the most successful political diarists are people who have occupied the lower foothills. Perhaps because they have time to look around and observe details that those who occupy the stratosphere often fail to notice.' He is portrayed onstage as the reluctant junior minister, who cannot quite avoid the feeling that he is selling out his principles by being in government and achieving less than in his Select Committee days.
Cardiffian actor Hywel Morgan plays Blair, giving an inch-perfect rendition of the old joker-actor extraordinaire - carrying off the mannerisms and speech patterns just as well as Michael Sheen, if not better. It is a timely portrayal, reminding us just how persuasive and charming Blair could be - but not neglecting the darker side, the lack of attention to detail, the belief in following America "as an article of faith". New Labour is demonstrated at its venal worst through the vignette of a smug Geoff Hoon barely suppressing laughter whilst boasting of the precision of allied bombs. This was a moment in the first volume of diaries that chilled me to the core and it is just as hard-hitting when enacted.
The production is entirely sure-footed, as one would expect of the director Max Roberts, a founding member of the Live Theatre in 1973, which has been based on Newcastle's Quayside since 1982. The theatrical space itself is decidedly intimate; I was sat at one of the 'cabaret' tables near the front, which are on a level with the stage. This proximity avoids the distancing 'proscenium arch' effect that is tangible at many theatres; it is more informal and allows for an 'honest transaction' between the actors and audience.
Roberts has directed numerous plays by important northern playwrights such as Alan Plater, Tom Hadaway, C.P. Taylor, Julia Darling, Peter Flannery and Lee Hall. Probably his most famous play of recent years is Hall's The Pitmen Painters, which premiered at the Live Theatre in 2007, transferring to the National Theatre in 2008 and then Broadway in September 2010. This was based upon the real-life story of the Ashington Group of pitmen who became artists, whilst still working down the mines during the day. Phillippa Wilson, who appeared in that successful play, features here as Mullin's wife Ngoc and gives an uncanny impersonation of Clare Short.
The appropriately named 'recess' between Acts contained a few appropriately bland songs of the era: U2's 'Beautiful Day' - capturing the compulsory positvity of early-Blair era globalisation - and The Lighthouse Family's 'Lifted', as slick and insipid a cultural artefact as the pager, the Millennium Dome and 'Cool Britannia'. The emptiness of this latter song can be seen as symbolic of Blair's uplifting rhetoric, whilst also remembering how it was played in Alan Johnson's car in an early episode of Peep Show. It might be worth noting that Johnson was the sort of businessman whom New Labour were dazzled by, who ended up losing out in the financial crisis of 2008. His Labour Party namesake does not appear in the play, though is briefly mentioned by Nicholas Soames as 'worth around 30 more seats' than Gordon Brown as Labour leader in a speculative General Election.
John Hodgkinson is on stage for the full duration as Mullin and captures the man's crumpled decency; playing him almost as a professorial Charles Pooter, but a Pooter agonised about the state of the world and the compromises involved in government. The actor - veteran of many RSC productions, Sheffield-set film Whatever Happened to Harold Smith and appearances in excellent comedies such as Peep Show and People Like Us - manages an impressive feat of line learning. Hodgkinson's decision to address the audience, not to read the book onstage, allows for a straightforward, rather moving interaction with the audience. His performance suggests that Mullin is the sort of man we need in politics: an idealist open to compromise, but also capable of making a stand on certain issues. He is redeemed by his principled position on Iraq; one gets the impression that Mullin would not have been able to live with himself had he voted for that disastrous adventure. Hodgkinson's Mullin is endangered, humane Labour incarnate - in all of his wrestlings with his conscience and dealings with the power-seeking Blair.
Mullin despairs of many of his fellow Labour Party people and many voters, even if there is no sense that hope is entirely lost. He comes across on stage as one of that seemingly dying breed - a liberal-left Labourite from the well-meaning middle-classes. He is righteously despairing of the proto-"Blue Labour" tendencies of the Blair government, particularly with regard to asylum and law and order policy. His final speech to parliament implies that Labour were not 'small-s socialist, small-l liberal and small-g green' enough, as he had always sought to be himself. Time and again, Blair and those in power took the path of least resistance: caving in to the media; fostering rather than challenging the public's complacent consumerism.
A Walk on Part is justifiably damning of the local and national media; wistfully highlighting Blair's missed opportunity to regulate the right-wing press and delivering a characteristic barrage of Sunderland Echo headlines to demonstrate local myopia and ignorance. The play indeed captures a paradox at the heart of Britain and Sunderland: greater affluence, but no greater wisdom or happiness - in the media, nor in people's lives: as shown in the encounters with often mean-spirited locals, moaning about asylum seekers and having to pay tax.
There are poignant, sad moments aplenty, such as Mullin's many dealings with asylum-seeker constituents - but also moments of sublime comedy, such as The Man's 'listening exercise', post-2005 election, and far too many more to mention. Its characteristic mix of humour and wistfulness is expressed in a moment early in the second act, as detailed in Alfred Hickling's Guardian review: 'It is election-night tradition that Sunderland South is first to declare its result. In 2005, the country's swiftest counters broke their own record, leaving Chris Mullin, the Labour MP who served the constituency for 23 years, to reflect in his diaries that he was, for 40 minutes, the only elected member of Parliament in the country: "Perhaps I ought to have considered forming a government".You cannot help feeling what a better, more genial place the country might have been if he had'.
A Walk on Part leaves one thinking of how much better things would be if someone with Mullin's intelligence and compassion was at the helm. It is a subtle, nuanced requiem for an era in British politics; an apologia for New Labour, highlighting some of its successes, but also fundamentally depairing of its failures on most issues that mattered.
This is a play for anyone interested in politics, recent history or the north east. Whilst it will no doubt transfer to other theatres and go down well in the capital, I would urge readers to see this while it is on in Newcastle, if at all possible.
A Walk On Part - The Fall of New Labour is on at the Live Theatre, Broad Chare, Quayside, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 3DQ - until Saturday 4th June 2011.
http://live.org.uk/whatson/mainhouseproduction.noscroll.php?production=0010
