YAMMER

As a young man I fell out of love with the Theatre. At a time of Punk Rock, the explosive movies of Scorcese, Coppola and early De Palma, the television of Bochco, Bleasdale and Jimmy McGovern, a night spent amongst the self-congratulatory middle-classes watching some left-leaning production by Bond, Brenton or Hare felt not only as dull as wholemeal bread but an evening wasted. Surely the real protest was out in the streets, in the clubs, living the lifestyle. Surely the proper way of changing the world was by doing something about it, whether that meant a Rock Against Racism gig, taking the piss out of Hippies or making your own records... not just writing about it.

Well times haven’t changed. Last night I went to the first night of the new Howard Brenton play ‘Never So Good’, a play about the life of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a man who presided over the last days of Empire, an Edwardian figure, scarred by his experiences during the First World War who had to live with the ignominy of his wife carrying on with one of his political colleagues, Lord Boothby, an individual who himself came unstuck after too many nights spent fraternizing with the brothers Kray.

And while the production was both well staged and well written, my overriding feeling about the evening was one of missed opportunity. The most significant event in Macmillan’s political life, the moment which finally handed him the reins of power, was the imbecilic catastrophe of Suez, Britain’s last attempt to effect World Order. The Americans having bailed us out of World War Two were in no mind to allow us such status and pulled the rug from under our feet once our boys had reached Port Said, threatening to sell off the Pound which would have bankrupted Britain in less than three days.

Suez of course was largely about Oil, and much in the way Paul Thomas Anderson’s bizarrely vacuous film ‘There Will Be Blood’ implied far more than it actually delivered, so Brenton’s play also suffered, going as far - in the only really cack-handed moment of the evening - as having the invading Tommies of 1953 dressed in contemporary Iraq-styled battle-gear and run around yelling the word ‘fuck’.

This half-baked bit of agit-prop didn’t bother me unduly, there has to be some reason for going to see a play about a largely forgotten Prime Minister after all, and the more obvious the dramatist can make his contemporary parallels the more likely he’ll receive a commission. And of course, for Brenton’s generation of writers, the gang currently at the top of the heap - your Pinter brigade - the 50’s was their coming of age, the time when they got their first break, their launch into public and professional life. The decade means something more to them than it does the rest of us and therefore they’re going to do their upmost to remind us of its importance. It’s notable that in the world of television - the world of the Baby Boomers - you never see list-shows of the 1950’s. They all begin ten years later. That’s not because footage doesn’t exist. It’s because the programme makers don’t give a damn about a crusty, repressed and somewhat confused era, when homosexuality was illegal, divorces were frowned upon and sex before marriage, amongst the middle and upper classes at least, was still a reason for social exclusion.

Sitting in the Lyttleton Theatre - its lobby manifesting all the ambience of a secondary airport - I found myself surrounded by members of that same 50’s generation, all looking a little tired, grey and weather-beaten, shuffling to their seats rheumy-eyed, the Aldermaston March obviously having finally caught up with them. As as they knowingly chuckled along to the material, proudly spotting the references and in-jokes - Peter Cook, Christine Keeler, Churchill’s ‘Black Dog’ - I found myself thinking, why the loving analysis of men and women who are now dead? Why the examination of a time gone by? It is so easy to nod sagely at the errors of judgement made by ghosts from the past, the psychological flaws, their bizarre predilections, their manner of doing things we wouldn’t do now. What about the errors of today? What about the buffoons, the egotists, the sly little monsters running Britain right now?

As Iraq continues to burn, the economy veers like an unattached weather balloon, feckless mothers and fathers - as if reliving some sort of Dickensian tale - find their children stolen or murdered, I see little purchase in consoling our intellect by making the parallels between Now versus Then, when it’s clearly Now we should be worrying about. We’ve just watched a Pope-driven lawyer sidle away from the nation’s centre-stage like some latter day Pontius Pilate, not even bothering to dry his hands before picking up 'jobs from the boys' left, right and centre. The man he has left behind is a charmless obsessive who chews his nails to to the bone and shuffles about like a bear with a head on. I can’t see much of a play being written about Gordon Brown 50 years from now. The rest of the Cabinet is made up of middle-management types, starry-eyed policy wonks and mini-bots - come on down Miliband and Blears. Is this really the best our country has to offer? No wonder we’re in a cultural mess. The opposition if anything is worse. Made up of ‘characters’, though for character read privileged toffs, some of whom find it quite alright to sleep with other women behind their wife’s back - all a bit of a Mayoral laugh. In that sense at least little has changed since Macmillan’s day. Truly, Cameron and Boris are the New Edwardians.

I suppose we get the Government we deserve. Always have, always will. But as these chubby-cheeked minnows flap and holler across the despatch box we are left to look on in weary despair. Britons abroad mean less and less by the year. A rump of an Army the rest of Nato neglects, the odd freak of a performer smacked-up and cracked, a football league made up of multi-millionaire foreigners, a capital city now a refuge for gangsters - both blue and white collar - a tabloid culture spiteful and petty, a young population washing itself in booze for underlying reasons no one seems to want to address for fear that the revenue might be lost if habits were irrevocably changed. Suicides up, divorces up, unwanted pregnancies up, violent crime between people who know each other up... we're a happy breed indeed.

So while we sit humming and hawing about a world left behind, picking through its carcass for those elements we miss - order, respect, a proper cup of tea - we might take a moment to ponder or even dissect the second-rate salesman currently running the show. Fifty-years from now, it’ll might well be too late.