Life After Scandal - Hampstead Theatre

First draft - Written for CultureWars.org.uk

Robin Soans hit verbatim gold in 2005 with his edited collection of interviews Talking to Terrorists. It was showing at the Royal Court on 7/7, and what had been relevant drama became urgent, required viewing. Its level-headed compassionate inquiry became a vital corrective to the media hysteria that followed in the aftermath of the bombings. His new play Life After Scandal, perhaps inevitably, lacks any such immediacy and punch.

As the title suggests, the piece looks at the effects on the lives of those who have been vilified in the national press. It is an interesting subject, but the nature of verbatim theatre casts a long shadow over the evening’s proceedings. For a start, the subjects are a self-selecting sample. The piece begins with a barrage of refusals from potential interviewees, all saying that they don’t want to talk on the subject. Others do, of course - at great length in many cases. But what of those who wouldn’t/didn’t? Perhaps as a result of this reticence, or perhaps as a result of Soans’s specific interests, the range here is remarkably narrow - Two disgraced former Tory MPs (three, if you view Edwina Curry as a disgrace), two MP’s wives, four or five hereditary peers, but no Jeffery Archer, and not a single guilty party from a sex-scandal.

At a stroke, the piece stops being so much about Scandal in general and starts looking at the important results of some serious investigative journalism. Granted, elsewhere Lord Brockett pops up, as does Charles “the coughing major” Ingram from Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? But then we’ve already seen these people (Lord Brockett, the Hamiltons, etc.) on television innumerable times since their “scandals” broke, rehabilitating themselves as media-friendly figures of celebrity fun eating jungle insect life at the behest of Ant ‘n’ Dec. The subjects here are those who have made a living from their notoriety.

Beyond this, there is the problem that one only has the subjects’ insights to illuminate the subject. Only if they betray themselves, or cast new and unexpected light on the subject, can the play really take off; which, by and large, those interviewed do not. There are exceptions - Robin Cook’s ex-wife gives a chilling insight into the circumstances of her divorce from the late Foreign Secretary - but mostly what we are offered is a lot of self-pity and anger. All quite understandable, but it feels that in order to get the interviewers to talk, Soans threw nothing but underarm balls while offering tea and sympathy. There is a spark when the words of Guardian journalist David Leigh, who broke the Jonathan Aitken story, are intercut with Aitken’s personal attacks on him and vice versa.

Ironically, one ends up making precisely the sort of judgements that the subjects of the play rail against so vociferously. The Hamiltons come out of it fine, as does Edward Lord Montague; Charles Ingram is understandably angry, if unintentionally hilarious; Lord Brockett is bluff, blokey and fine. Edwina Currie and Margaret Cook are both enormously sympathetic characters, although this may have as much to do with Geraldine Fitzgerald’s portrayal of both, which lends humour and gravity in precisely the right measures. Jonathan Aitken fares less well at the hands of his actor; Philip Bretherton often crosses the boundary from portrayal into pastiche. The potential for Aitken’s words to sound pompous, self-deluding and grandiose is gleefully seized - with the odd result that he comes out of it looking and sounding much more like a louche, self-ironising Alan Clark. David Leigh doesn’t do himself many favours either, preferring to remain vitriolic against Aitken and the Hamiltons, where simple indifference would have looked more humane. Craig Murray, despite being by far the most courageous character on stage, at times runs worryingly close to sounding every inch the paranoid mess that the British establishment paint him as.

The play’s arguments and presentations are a little muddled, and come across more like a mass of source material than a finished product. That said, the acting is consistently engaging throughout and, on a moment to moment basis, the play is never less than interesting. Sadly it never manages to go much beyond this to offer new insights into the nature of scandal, other than to suggest that “the establishment” deliberately use it as a weapon of control to uphold the status quo.

This suggestion is rather punctured by the fact that virtually every scandal-struck interviewee is at least very upper-middle class, if not actually aristocracy, while the press are uniformly presented as cockerney oiks en masse and, when interviewed, are clearly from less privileged backgrounds than their targets - giving the overall impression that all scandal reporting is an elaborate form of class war being waged against our rulers by a bunch of ill-bred, uppity proles. Ultimately, however, despite the interesting subject matter and, no doubt, good intentions, Life After Scandal is too polite to make enough noise to hit any big targets.

Everybody loves a talk show

Just to compromise my journalistic integrity further, I’ve just been made producer of the Finborough Theatre’s excellent FinboroughForum strand of discussions. Expect more on related subjects in weeks to come. And fewer reviews of plays running at that particular theatre.

Strangely, it seems that chatshow time has kicked right off in theatres across town. More centrally, the Soho Theatre has just unveiled its own first series of discussions and interviews under its new Director of Talks, Observer literary editor Stephanie Merritt.

The initial outlook was not promising. On the 16th October we get the opportunity to see “Kerry Katona talk to the Guardian’s Hadley Freeman about her new book and celebrity culture”. Leaving aside the obvious nepotism involved in the choice of interviewer, one idly wonders how much Kerry Kantona actually knows about celebrity culture. Yes, she’s been in it (I was confronted with a picture of her sunbathing topless on holiday only the other day in the News of the World) and written a spill-my-guts autobiography, but does all that exposure mean she’ll have any insight whatsoever? It is almost tempting to find out.

A fortnight later on 30th we are offered “Rude Girls” in which “blogger Zoe Margolis (Girl with a One Track Mind) talks to former Erotic Review editor Rowan Pelling about sex and feminism.” - Former Erotic Review editor and Observer columnist, cynics might note. Again, despite the neatly zeitgeist-grabbing tone, is this really any more than tabloid dross served up with a garnish of middlebrow gloss? Wouldn’t it have been rather more interesting to have the blogger and Pelling on the panel, perhaps supplemented by Lucy Prebble - the excellent young playwright behind the forthcoming adaptation of the Belle de Jour blog for television - being interviewed by someone with much less natural sympathy for their project (Ann Widdecombe or Clare Short spring to mind)? As an aside, you’ll note that the TV adaptation has changed the title to The Secret Diary of a Call Girl. The reason? Apparently ITV didn’t think its audience would understand the French, let alone the allusion.

As it turns out, the overall programme is considerably better than that. Some of the events further along the schedule look at genuinely interesting questions, alongside a selection of neatly chosen literary and artistic interviews. Clearly Merritt is going to offer a real range and depth of field. From a quick perusal of the debates on offer, Playing With Fire (although, boo to David Edgar's crappy play and using it as a title) asks: “Why do writers and artists deliberately cause offence, even when it wins them death threats?” with a panel that promises Nicholas Hytner and Stewart Lee along with a panel of eminent playwrights and writers to discuss the issues. Which sounds like an excellent event.

In “African? Caribbean? What’s the big fuss?” Tiata Fahodzi’s Artistic Director Femi Elufowoju, jr leads a panel including Roy Williams and Bola Agbaje to discuss “the arguably delicate historical relationship which exists between African and Caribbean descendants living in Britain today”. Given that the subject has been the spur to exciting plays by both, and is an area of discussion which terrifies white media pundits, this should be invaluable.

Elsewhere, Paines Plough’s conversational short new play strand, Later, has resumed at the Trafalgar Studios. The next three are on Monday 17 September, Monday 8 October and Monday 15 October. The first is curated by Leo Butler, the current (excellent and lovely) tutor on the Royal Court’s Young Writer’s Programme, and boasts a line-up that hand-picks some of its star pupils featuring new work from Polly Stenham and Alexandra Wood along with Elinor Cook, Elise Hearst and Ben Ockrent. The following two dates promise Murder at Gobbler's Wood - a collaboration between Robin French, Dennis Kelly and Enda Walsh - along with work from Paines Plough’s Future Perfect 2008.

While from last night Hampstead theatre’s Daring Pairings runs until the end of the week with, again, a selection of collaborations between a wide range of writers, which again have an exciting and innovative look to them. I’m going tonight and tomorrow night on unprecedented Blog-press tickets and will report back tomorrow.

Finally, on the subject of chat shows, I was on last week's Culture Clash on 18 Doughty Street talking about the whole of the Edinburgh experience and the current Andrew Marr series on Radio 4 in case you missed (ha!) it.