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A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewGreat Britain
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"We go out and destroy other people's lives on your behalf." — Paige Britainn
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Cast in Great Britainn (Photo: Johan Persson) |
Great Britain is a vicious satire that you may find offensive but many will find themselves laughing themselves silly. Richard Bean has a background in stand up comedy and he is not afraid of being politically incorrect. The fast and furious pace of the newspaper office in which it is all set is dynamic and the language explicit. For goodness sake, do not take your maiden aunt unless she is die hard fan of Have I Got News for You, a veteran of That Was the Week That Was and is immune to all the profusion of Chaucerian four letter words.
We follow the career in journalism, at a paper called The Free Press, of news editor Paige Britainn (Lucy Punch) as she gets into bed with the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Donald Doyle Davidson (Ben Mansfield) and a future Conservative Prime Minister, Jonathan Whey (Rupert Vansittart). Through Paige, Bean exhibits the corrupt interdependency of press, police and politicians. The press need inside stories from politicians, the politicians want press backing for their elections, the press need tip offs from the police and the police need the backing of politicians for funding and support. I won't comment on illegal payments to the police. In return for supporting the Tory PM candidate, the paper negotiates a deal to get rid of the BBC's licence funding and we know that the real News of the World proprietor Rupert Murdoch has long resented the "free" news of the BBC.
Robert Glenister's editor Wilson Tikkel is so ruthless and caustic as they develop the exposee story of "cottaging vicars" with the sleazy headlines. Dermot Crowley plays Paschal O'Leary, the newspaper's proprietor. A set up makes them carry the spoof story of the Queen as a teenager playing in a German Nazi band which reminds us that in this dark and dingy world of secrecy and anonymous sources, verification is often not possible.
The greatest joy for me in this play was the "foot in mouth" Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sully Kassam (Aaron Neil) whose press conferences are a disaster of Malapropian proportions. When apologizing for the disproportionate number of black men killed by the police, he promises to ensure that a similar number of white men are killed to ensure fairness. In his appeal to the public he says, "A clue is the one thing I have not got."His volunteering to be a Tazer victim on live television is hysterical. Sully Kassam could well go on to have his own comedy series. The crass diversity-aimed re-naming of New Scotland Yard as New Mary Seacole Yard is titilating, particularly as Mary Seacole was a Crimean nurse and not a police officer.
Lucy Punch gives a sterling performance as Paige Britainn and she is rarely off the stage for its two hours playing time. I saw Billie Piper in this role in the original production at the National and Punch's accent has an EastEnd/Essex twang unlike the one Billie Piper used which was more privately educated. Paige is a smooth operator but Rebecca Brooks'lookalike Virginia White (Jo Dockery), brought in by O'Leary, is as smooth as Teflon when the arrests happen. Like Rebecca Brooks we will wonder at her acquittal, rising squeaky clean from the mire that was the News of the World.
Towards the end of the play, Paige tells us that if the hacking scandal had saved a child who had been murdered or caught a murderer, no one would have cared about the privacy invasion of celebrities and the public accolades would have followed.
I laughed and laughed on both viewings so it didn't fall flat when I knew what jokes were coming. There are slick scene changes using high tech media and screens that mist over and open up, often with a dummy headline to make us laugh in between. These spoof headlines are about blaming immigrants for all of the country's ills, pandering to the prejudices of the British public. These parody real life headlines: "Immigrant dole cheat's cat ate salmon", "Immigrants eat swans" and "Immigrants Melt Arctic".
Don't miss this tremendous Beanfest!
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| Great Britain
Written by Richard Bean Directed by Nicholas Hytner Starring: Dermot Crowley, Lucy Punch, Robert Glenister, Aaron Neil, Ben Mansfield, Andrew Woodall, Rupert Vansittart With: William Chubb, Jo Dockery, Ross Boatman, Nick Sampson, Iain Mitchell, Robert Calvert, Kames Harkness, Sarah Annis, Barbara Kirby, Kellie Shirley, Miles Mitchell, Ian Hallard, Scott Karim, Joseph wilkins, Harriet Thorpe, Maggie McCarthy, Kiruna Stammell, Nicholas Lumley Designer: Tim Hatley Lighting Design: Neil Austin Video Design: 59 Productions Sound Design : Paul Arditti Music: Grant Olding Running time: Two hours 25 minutes with an interval Box Office: 020 7452 3000 (National Theatre Box Office) Booking to 10th January 2015 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 29th September 2014 performance at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London SW1Y 4HT (Tube : Piccadilly Circus) |
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