This House

by James Graham

seen at the Garrick Theatre on 11 January 2017

Directed by Jeremy Herrin, this production has transferred from Chichester, though the play was first presented at the National Theatre in 2012. It features Nathaniel Hawthorne as Jack Weatherill (the Tory Deputy Chief Whip), Steffan  Rhodri as Walter Harrison (the Labour Deputy Chief Whip), with Malcolm Sinclair as the Tory Chief Whip, Phil Daniels as the Labour Chief Whip (until his demise), and Lauren O'Neill as Ann Taylor, the only female (Labour) whip. Other cast members take various parts as MPs both lesser known and famous - there are cameo appearances for John Stonehouse, Norman St Jon Stevas and Michael Heseltine.

The set represents the House of Commons, and some members of the audience are seated as if on the Commons benches or in the visitors' galleries. Adroit lighting turns parts of the stage into other Parliamentary venues, in particular the Government and Opposition Whips' offices (there's a delicious joke that the Government office has chairs with adjustable seats whereas the Opposition has to make so with ordinary - though still not uncomfortable - chairs). The play examines the fraught years from 1974 to 1978 when Labour formed the government firstly in a hung parliament and then with the slenderest of majorities, leading to desperate measures to ensure that crucial votes were passed, thus avoiding a vote of no confidence.

The spectacle is a sorry one, with each side apparently more concerned with ousting the other or surviving the attack, than with the ever-worsening state of the country as a whole. It is, however, all too plausible, and is based on what can be ascertained so far as external events are concerned, together with a believable (if faintly appalling) insight into how the Whips operate. With such a slender majority, everything boils down to numbers, and the situation is more awkward when the system of 'pairing' (whereby the Government or Opposition parties allowed a member to be deliberately absent from a vote in the House if there was an overriding reason why one from the other side could not be there) broke down amidst accusations that the Labour Government had cheated.

Add to this the superciliousness of the Tories and the class anger of the Labour MPs, and the result is both entertaining and instructive. Major political events such as the elections of both Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher to leadership positions occur off stage, but their effects are cogently reflected through the eyes of the whips who have to come to terms with new leaders. The curious tribalism of each side, and the even more curious rituals by which they expect their business to be conducted, are at times very funny, and at other times almost tragic. And, despite the fact that the play is very specifically set in the 1970s (clothes and hair styles are spot on, as well as the musical background), it has all sorts of resonances with the current political climate - devolution and relations with Europe loom large, as well as ruminations about the effectiveness of the system and the health of the parliamentary parties.

The lead actors - and indeed the entire cast - are excellent, and the play does not resort to cheap shots; the humour is deservedly earned, which allows the more poignant moments - the toll on personal health and well-being, and a surprisingly moving offer from Jack Weatherill to 'pair' with a mortally ill Labour MP - to be all the more powerful.