Election Fever Part II Counted - devised and directed by Steve Bottoms, Ben Freedman and Mimi Poskitt ***

Produced by Roundhouse and Look Left Look Right, Counted is a documentary-play which dramatises verbatim responses given by UK residents in response to questions about the voting process. Staged in the Debating Chamber at County Hall, the play gives a unique and original insight into the widespread apathy preventing people from exercising their democratic right to vote. Televised debates are one way to mobilise us into voting, and the reactions reflected in the polls suggest that people are finally becoming politicised and aware that they have an opinion on political matters. During the course of the play we hear from the controller of factual programming at ITV who suggests that the three party leaders should take part in 'I'm a Celebrity' (or rather, 'I'm a Politician') in order to 'appear human' – as ridiculous as this may sound, more people vote for television talent competitions than they do at general elections.

Of course this play is preaching to the converted – the audience was small (dwarfed by the expansive setting) and predominantly middle-class and middle-aged; your average theatre-going demographic. Those represented in the play were small-town people, speaking with regional accents and obviously coming from a poorer, and poorly-educated, majority. Although the actors did their best to portray these characters feelingly, I couldn't help but think that at some points we were meant to feel entertained rather than shocked by their ignorance. The Debating Chamber is the last place this play should be staged - it should be touring schools and colleges. Counted is trying to convince us that politics is not about the wrangles between MPs in Westminster, but rather the politics governing change at a local level, within the community. The quick-change between characters that the six actors accomplished with ease was engrossing and highly entertaining and would feasibly work in the school environment.

Unfortunately this play has little to offer in the way of a remedy. If people hold strong opinions and would go out and vote if only they knew that their vote counted, then it isn't political apathy that's the problem, but a lack of understanding about the political process and a lack of trust in the politicians. And this play tells us that this lack of trust is justified; the democratic process isn't perfect and, in some ways, it isn't working at all. The same malaise that prevents people from voting has affected London theatre-goers; a disinterest in politics. Just as voters are turning out in ever-diminishing numbers, so are those who would pay to see a play about politics, which is a real shame as this production is vital and necessary, even if a bit rough around the edges. The most moving account was saved until last; a teenage-mother, who knows nothing about what it means to vote, feels helpless when she is treated badly by midwives at her local hospital. But can voting alone restore the sense of dignity and empowerment that so many are without?

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Election Fever Part I A Day at the Racists by Anders Lustgarten**** and Posh by Laura Wade ***

The Broadway Theatre in Barking opened its Spin the Election festival with a one-off performance of Anders Lustgarten’s ground-breaking play about the rise of the BNP, A Day at the Racists. An altogether different play is currently running at the Royal Court in west London with an attack on the privileged ruling classes at its heart. Posh by Laura Wade is centered on the ‘Riot Club’, an Oxford University dining society for aristocrats who rage against the loss of an idealised England they believe once belonged to them. Both plays have much to say about the current state of Britain and have powerful political messages that are lent further gravitas by the proximity of the general election.

A Day at the Racists is particularly provocative because Barking is in real danger of becoming a BNP-controlled council; Nick Griffin is running for MP and in the last election his party ran for 13 seats and won 12, in this election they are running 34 candidates and they only need 26 seats to take the Council. Taking the recent change in BNP party-membership rules to its logical conclusion, the play shows a certain prescience in having a British Pakistani woman, Gina, running the BNP election campaign for the Barking and Dagenham constituency. Gina is believable and charismatic; she avoids the opprobrious BNP ideology and concentrates on policy to address the legitimate concerns of Pete, a working-class and disaffected Labour supporter.

Gina’s promise to overhaul the housing allocation system to give priority to long-time residents strikes a chord with Pete whose son and young granddaughter are living his front room. This is a real concern affecting the borough and, as was made apparent in the Q&A session which followed the performance; residents feel that these are the issues that need to be addressed and have not been dealt with by the current government. The first half of the play is powerful because Gina seems to offer a reasonable way out; we allow ourselves to understand, even for the briefest of moments, why Pete might perceive the BNP to be a real alternative.

Pete is a loveable everyman seduced by Gina’s energy and the solutions she offers to his problems, but he is also seduced by Gina herself and this is where the play is at its weakest. In the second half it becomes apparent that a unique set of circumstances have led to Pete’s entanglement with the BNP – his attraction to Gina and her involvement in securing a flat for his son, Mark. More worrying still is that the only thing that finally discredits the BNP in Pete’s eyes is the incitement of racist violence by BNP members as an integral strategy in their election campaign. This is artistic license on Lustgarten’s part and it serves to bring the play to a dramatic conclusion but it falsifies the reality, and this is a play which draws its strength from the real issues. I would have much preferred a less dramatic ending which saw Pete renounce the party because of abhorrence at their ideology and the values they stand for.


Posh may not be quite so electrifying but it certainly deals with pertinent issues. With Boris Johnson and David Cameron being infamous past members of the Bullingdon Club, we can see exactly where Wade is aiming her invective – straight at the heart of the Conservative Party. The first half of the play is a humorous romp promising much hedonism and revelry as the diners congregate at a private dining-room. A newly initiated member pointedly asks when membership of the club mean automatic entry into politics, but everything else remains lighthearted until things take a sinister turn after the interval. Leo Bill (of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland fame) plays Alistair, the most outspoken of the group - venomous in his attacks on the 'poor', he is a distasteful fascist with extreme views. The audience, who much of the time seemed to be laughing with these privileged bigots rather than at them, was perceptibly unnerved by the harrowing turn of events which sees drunken boisterousness quickly descend into serious violence. But soon they were laughing knowingly as the disgraced Alistair is offered a place in 'the party' by uncle-figure Jeremy.

For all its faults, A Day at the Racists has the edge over Posh, although both are exciting and thought-provoking works. Lustgarten's play worked so well because of the frisson generated by being staged at The Broadway. The same could be said for Posh, whose audience definitely had its representative Kensington & Chelsea contingent, but it didn't have the same urgency about it; one passionate member of the audience of A Day at the Racists stressed the importance of Lustgarten's play – the very people watching it have the power to prevent a BNP win in Barking & Dagenham and they have very little time in which to do it.

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1936 by Tom McNab – Arcola Theatre **

Tom McNab cannot be faulted when it comes to dedication to his art – he is appearing after each performance of 1936 at the Arcola to lead a discussion. I cannot enlighten you as to the form or necessity of this discussion as, having not enjoyed the play, I didn't stay for it or for the accompanying excerpt from the Riefenstahl film Olympiad. These added extras are very telling: the play should stand on its own as the dramatisation of a moment in history, it should be whole in itself without the need for attendant analytical baggage. The historical points and ideological implications were so patronisingly laboured throughout that there was really no need to follow it with more prescriptive pronouncements from the cast or playwright.

The play centres on America's potential boycott of the Berlin Olympic Games in response to the treatment of the Jewish athletes by the Nazis. An interesting premise which failed in the execution: this subject does have dramatic potential but the play felt like a fleshed-out textbook rather than an engaging piece of theatre. McNab is so bent on historical accuracy that an engaging script and believable characters are sidelined. Hitler was diminutive and predominantly unconvincing, only once reaching the heights of passion for which the real historical figure was infamous. The director, Jenny Lee, has Jesse Owens and a female high-jumper go at their respective sports in strange sepia-lit slow-motion which managed to raise a chuckle in this theatre-goer but extinguished any last remaining shreds credibility.

By the end, it isn't just the play that asks us 'would the holocaust have happened if America hadn't attended?', there is an irritating reporter/narrator to put this question to us with the lack of subtlety which characterises the whole enterprise. Indeed, we will never know the answer to this question, or any other like it, because 'the ifs of history stretch from here to Albuquerque'. And on that cringe-worthy note, all I can say is that at least 1936 had brevity on its side.

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Macbeth directed by Declan Donnellan - Silk Street Theatre, Barbican Centre **

Having never seen a production of Macbeth I was eagerly awaiting this modern-dress version produced by Cheek by Jowl, the company responsible for a very powerful Othello at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in 2004 and an inventive Troilus and Cressida at the Barbican in 2008. The set was sparse, leaving a wide expanse of stage bounded either side by tall wooden pallets through which light periodically streaked into the murky gloom enveloping the stage. The lighting was atmospheric and particularly effective during the banquet scene; the arrival of Banquo's ghost was spookily done with only his head illuminated, coming seemingly disembodied towards a petrified Macbeth.

Donnellan's efforts were interesting but unfortunately the overall effect was rather underwhelming and amateur. Sincerity was missing from many of the performances and some of the choices made regarding staging were bizarre and didn't work well. The decision to present the three weird sisters as disembodied voices was perhaps a way to make the supernatural elements of the play more palatable to a modern and incredulous sensibility but I was looking forward to terrifying witches in all their bodily ghoulishness. The lack of witches ties in neatly with Macbeth's visions, the 'false creations' of his mind, but this was taken to a whole different level with the absence of all of the murderers in the play which left Banquo squirming around on the floor gripped by dramatic death throes as his would-be assassins remained invisible. Similarly Macduff's wife and child pin their own arms behind their backs and die with terrific convulsions which lack all semblance of shock and violence because of the stifled hilarity provoked by watching someone pretend to die in this overtly theatrical manner.

Anastasia Hille as Lady Macbeth gave an unsteady performance which strengthened as the play progressed; she was bewitching in the sleep-walking scene but her gestures were far too flamboyant and descriptive at the beginning so that she almost appeared to be miming her words. Will Keen was grating as Macbeth; he made a good show of being wracked with guilt, tormented by his ambition and then overcome with a sense of his own power but his enunciation was poor and his utterances often sounded little more than a series of grunts which rather spoilt the great Shakespearean iambic pentameter. The sexual chemistry between the two was well-expressed; the moment where they passionately embrace after murdering Duncan, trying to keep their bloody hands out of the way, was particularly disturbing.

Kelly Hotten's porter was probably the star of the show, her inscrutable thick Glasweigan accent did nothing to mar the bawdy comedy which was excellently expressed with her body anyway. Unashamedly straight out of a pantomime, the porter's character was approached honestly and knowingly which is more than can be said for the rest of the play which offered its audience pantomime theatricality in all pretentious seriousness.

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