Great Britain

Saturday 9^th August 2014

Soggy apple strudel. Hmm...

Hello, hello! I’m back! Did you miss me? Do not fear; theatrical activity has now resumed for the summer. It was on momentary hiatus while I jetted off here and there for business and pleasure. I made a trip to Austria for a few eventful days – alas not the trip but a work-related jaunt to Vienna. My attempts to swan about glamorously à la Baroness Schraeder, eat copious amounts of crisp apple strudel and stuff myself with schnitzel ‘altogether too delicious for my figure’ was somewhat thwarted when I caught a rather unpleasant lurgy. I’m quite sure nothing so indelicate ever happened to the Baroness. Perhaps I should have drunk more pink lemonade? Nevertheless, I did manage to sample a delicacy or two and to go on a tour of the famous Staatsoper. Do you know why it’s unlucky to whistle in an Opera House? Answers on a postcard...

Inside the Staatsoper

I then popped off to beautiful Lourdes for a glorious week. Curiously, this trip included several renditions of the ‘Sound of Music’ – on a French train... in a cafe... and in the hills themselves...

The hills are alive...

So, back in the UK, back to work, and back to the theatre. On Saturday, Terry had organised one of his famous trips to the National, this time to see Richard Bean’s new play, Great Britain. A swift, snappy take on the phone-hacking scandal, this was a late addition to the summer schedule, announced days after Andy Coulson’s sentencing.

The very dashing Anton Walbrook

My happy return to the National was preceded by a peaceful afternoon in Hampstead. I went to visit the grave of the magnificent Austrian actor, Anton Walbrook, at St John’s Church. Saturday was the forty-seventh anniversary of his death (though this was pure coincidence – I was unaware of this planning my trip). Born in Vienna in 1896 as Adolph Wohlbrück, Anton became a star on stage and screen in Austria and Germany in the early 1930s. One of his most famous films was the original, Viktor und Viktoria (1933), upon which, much later, Blake Edwards would base a musical. Half-Jewish, Walbrook fled the Nazis to England in 1936, anglicising his name. He quickly became well-known, appearing as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great (1937) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938) and as the manipulative husband in the original version of Gaslight (1940). He then made a series of films for the Archers team of Powell and Pressburger. I first became aware of him when, as a child, I was terrified by his portrayal of the cruel impresario, Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes (1948). More recently, I have been blown over by his performance as the kindly and perceptive German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). This is an extraordinary and very moving film about Anglo-German friendship in the midst of war. Walbrook lived in Hampstead and requested in his will that St John’s would be his final resting place. When he died in Bavaria from a heart attack at the age of seventy, his ashes were brought there. He deserves to be better remembered as a fine actor – dashing, mysterious, and mesmerising – who brought tremendous realism and intensity to his roles.  

Anton Walbrook's grave

St John’s is also the final resting place of several other famous names, including the artist, John Constable; the politician, Hugh Gaitskell; the actors, Gerald Du Maurier and Kay Kendall; and the author, Eleanor Farjeon. It’s a beautiful, leafy, peaceful spot in the midst of a bustling city.

I liked Hampstead a lot. I found a lovely Hungarian patisserie called Louis’, which served tea in china cups. Splendid.

And so to the National... Great Britain is an irreverent, hilarious, and relentless satire about the insidious power of the press. It follows the fortunes of a leading tabloid, The Free Press, and its ambitious news editor, Paige Britain (Billie Piper). Keen, determined, and seemingly without scruple, Britain is presented with journalistic gold dust by a rather doddering and naive source, who blithely lets her know the secret of accessing voicemails on another person’s mobile phone. She now has access all areas: to the murky world of forbidden love affairs – celebrity crushes, homosexual police chiefs, and politicians with prostitutes. Her ill-gotten gains give her great power. The Free Press wins the election for a Tory posh-boy, Jonathan Whey (Rupert Vansittart), but Paige has his secrets at her disposal. She also has the Metropolitan Police by the balls. Piper is bursting with energy as Britain, almost giddy with adrenaline. She thinks quickly, not deeply. She’s only interested in now, and now, and now, and more and more and more – the next story, the increasingly daring scoop.

The depiction of the Metropolitan Police Chief, Commissioner Sully Kassam, by Aaron Neil almost steals the show. Chosen for his ‘ethnic diversity’ rather than his intelligence, Sully is a liability. Self-labelled ‘the Gay Terminator,’ he is in a precarious position for a number of reasons. He’s being pursued by an angry Welsh lover; his force shows a dangerous aptitude for shooting innocent black guys; and, while attempting to be politically-correct, he suffers from chronic foot in mouth syndrome. When he’s not suggesting that more white men are shot to redress the imbalance, he’s voluntarily getting taser-ed on national tv. Aaron Neil plays Sully brilliantly – innocently and stupidly walking into every trap to the dismay of his second in command, Donald Doyle Davidson.

The newsroom set in the Lyttleton is built around three screens – when not being used as office partitions, they are put to great effect showing television clips and newspaper headlines. We live under attack from a constant barrage of rhetoric. The smug lecturing of ‘the Guardener’ and the farcical hysteria of the red-top press are parodied: ‘IMMIGRANTS EAT SWANS!’ Sully and his inane pronouncements are remixed as YouTube pop videos. We are also treated to extracts from trapped phone conversations. There’s an especially funny segment about the royals, in which Prince Charles is overhead telling Camilla that he hasn’t had a bath for a week, in order to experience what a real farmer smells like!

Although she’s wheedled her way into Westminster and Scotland Yard (gloriously rebranded New Mary Seacole Yard by Sully), Paige doesn’t have everything her own way. She does not get her hands of the editorship of The Free Press. Paschal O’Leary, the newspaper’s Irish proprietor, replaces the foul-mouthed, no-nonsense, Wilson Tikkel (Robert Glenister) with a vapid magazine editor from New York, Virginia White (whiter than white, perhaps?). Paige is angry, but in effect, Paschal has given her free reign. White is far too busy campaigning for horses’ rights in her Executive Suite to keep an eye on her phone-hacking hacks. How can she be expected to know what they’re up to?

Of course, we know these hacks went too far. The downfall of The Free Press comes with the kidnap of twin girls from a trailer-park. With insufficient evidence to convict the girls’ layabout father, the police are hamstrung, until Paige volunteers her ‘superhero’ services. Not only can she dish the dirt on Kieron Mills, she can successfully secure Davidson (by now her lover’s) appointment as Commissioner. Yet, several folks have become more than a bit suspicious. Other policemen have started sniffing around. A famous cricketer’s solicitor alleges his phone was hacked and his relationship consequently destroyed. A canny PR consultant plants a trash story about the Queen’s past in the Hitler Youth and it ends up in the paper. Then, everything crashes around Paige’s ears. The innocent Kieron Mills, branded a paedophile through trial by press, is murdered in jail. The girls are found dead and it’s revealed their phones were hacked. Davidson commits suicide. The Free Press is shut down and its journalists arrested. Is Paige sorry? Not very.

The cleverness of this play is that it’s bold and outrageous. The characters may be brash but they’re not only stereotypes. Yes, we aren't offered many insights into their lives outside the newsroom or their consciences (or lack thereof). Yet, their actions are all too familiar. The desperation of the over-privileged politician, seeking the support of the press to appear ‘normal’ to the masses is particularly recognisable. Bean is deliberately provocative and non-PC. The famous cricketer’s solicitor, Wendy Klinkard, has dwarfism – cue many groan-inducing jokes about disability, some made by Wendy herself. One can feel the audience deciding whether it’s appropriate to laugh! This in itself serves to highlight the overriding theme of the play. Bean is asking us: What is funny?  What is going too far?

In spite of all the laughter, Great Britain leaves a rather bitter taste in the mouth. This is not just because it exposes the dubious motives and methods of the press – we knew about them already – but because it also emphasises our – the readers’ – hypocrisy. As Paige herself states, nobody cared when the law was broken to expose two-timing celebrities or money-making politicians. We like hearing about the downfall of the rich and powerful. It sells papers. Paige corrupted a civil servant to buy a hard drive, exposing MPs’ abuse of their expenses and was hailed a heroine. Yet, everyone cared when the phones were hacked of two dead twins and she was named a criminal. If the twins had been found alive, would this still have been the case? Or would the illegality of hacking have been overlooked and The Free Press acclaimed? Where is the line between right and wrong? If we don’t like the gossip and scandal, why do we buy the papers? Are journalists simply giving us what we want, nay demand?

After the play was over and we gathered in the foyer to say our goodbyes, I spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Why did I know that man? I stared at him for a bit. He smiled slightly and I tried to be less obvious. A few minutes later it dawned on me. It was Hugh Fraser, a.k.a. Captain Hastings. Oh dear, my leetle grey cells were not on the ball. Poirot would have been unimpressed.

***

So there we are, back in theatrical business. Next stop, Trafalgar Studies on Saturday for Richard III... And today, today (after five hours in an online queue), I got tickets to see another Sherlockian in Shakespeare. Benedict who?