Gang of Four give us a history lesson for Lefties
ROY Jenkins, most bibulous and orotund of political poohbahs, was perfect for being sent up on stage.
so it proves in the Donmar Warehouse’s new one-act play, Limehouse, which takes us back to the morning in January 1981 when Jenkins, shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers gathered at David Owen’s house in east London.
The previous day, Michael Foot’s Labour had given the unions even more power over the parliamentary party. That was the breaking point for the social Democratic Party’s ‘Gang of Four’. it was time for the Left to splinter.
soon, the Press would be summoned and the sDP launched with a riverside photoshoot — Rodgers’ jumper making him look like a ‘sociology lecturer’.
steve Waters’ deliciously well-written, quickpaced play is timely, parallels between the Foot and Jeremy Corbyn Labour parties being obvious. Are we now, in 2017, about to see another sDP moment?
Mr Waters, and perhaps the Donmar’s artistic director Josie Rourke, who was close to ed Miliband, seem to itch for that to happen. it starts with Owen pacing his kitchen before dawn, an overhead digital clock telling us the hour. The set offers an early eighties, London yuppie kitchen, with pine fittings, spice rack and so forth.
The costumes are pretty authentic: shirley all frumpish tops, Rodgers a mess, Jenkins suited, even at the weekend. Did he even own jeans?
Owen’s American wife Debbie (nathalie Armin) urges her husband to nurture the human side of politics — she bakes a delicious-smelling Delia smith macaroni cheese.
in contrast to Debbie’s emotional intelligence, Tom Goodman-Hill’s Owen is blindly aggressive. Overdone, i feel.
The real Owen, though infuriatingly self-assured, is more drawling, more mellow in voice and gesture.
Rodgers complains that Owen, a Plymouth MP, thinks he is ‘Devon’s JFk’. Mr Goodman-Hill should reduce the energy levels a little.
it’s a long time before we meet Roger Allam’s Jenkins, who has got lost: eurocrat grandee Woy was not accustomed to driving himself, certainly not around east London. The delayed arrival gives the play a burgeoning momentum (dread word).
Mr Allam, in bald cap and spectacles, is almost unrecognisable as himself. He is not quite as rotund as Jenkins and the voice could be richer, more gooey, like a Camembert.
HOWeveR, this is a performance to savour and the script catches Roy’s self-mockingly bathetic gifts. He recalls Brussels for its ‘constant cwepuscular gweyness — might as well have been Pontypool’.
i am not enough of an sDP historian to be sure how fair playwright Waters has been: did the quartet really feel ‘squiffy’ on Chateau Lafite, and was Williams’ conversion to the cause really so last minute?
The clash of politicians’ vanities feels spot on, though. so hidebound, too: as they sit around the table, munching pasta, one of them still has to be the designated chairman of the discussion.
Debra Gillett catches old shirley’s breathy scattiness (with an inner steel). Meanwhile, Paul Chahidi makes the often overlooked Rodgers unexpectedly important to the mix, and sensitive.
each of the four has a soliloquy that skilfully lays down the political case. These may be a little romanticised — Rodgers’ devotion to the Labour movement is moving — but the play is honest enough to admit the sDP lacked roots.
it had not ‘seeped up’ from the people, but was the invention of four frustrated politicians and a thin-spread electorate of ‘harrumphing doctors and dentists and dons’.
The one bum note is the final scene when Miss Armin steps out of character and lectures us that history is repeating itself.
We spotted that! Otherwise, this is a richly enjoyable evening, which reminds us nothing can match British party politics for farcical drama.