Limehouse

by Steve Waters

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 16 March 2017

Polly Findlay directs Nathalie Armin as Debbie Owen, Tom Goodman-Hill as David Owen, Paul Chahidi as Bill Rodgers, Debra Gillett as Shirley Williams and Roger Allam as Roy Jenkins in a new play set on Sunday 25 January 1981 when the so-called 'Gang of Four' finally decided to leave the Labour Party and set up the SPD. 

The play is set in the open-plan kitchen of the Owens' Limehouse house, beginning in the early hours of the morning when Debbie persuades an irate David to host a meeting there, in part to repay the hospitality of the others and in part to avoid their catering arrangements. The guests arrive at separate times, allowing private conversations to take place before all of them try to thrash out their next move.

The previous day at a Labour Party conference in Wembley the left wing of the party had succeeded in passing a new formulation for electing a leader, but the dismay of the four centrist politicians had been growing for months beforehand - they had already been labelled by the Press as the 'Gang of Four' - and there was a great deal of speculation about what they would do and whether any of them would resign from the party.

The play does not pretend to documentary accuracy, but it does rely on presenting a convincing portrait of the five characters (four of whom are still alive and have seen the production) and a plausible account of their dilemmas, conflicts of loyalty, personal interactions and final decision. David Owen is clearly intemperate and lacking in personal diplomatic skills, which his wife Debbie tries to provide as hostess and to some extent as an outsider (she is a literary agent, not a politician, and is American, not British). Bill Rodgers knows he does not possess the 'star' quality of the other three, and is desperately torn in his personal and political loyalties, while Shirley Williams is extremely wary of being bullied into a position she is not happy with. Roy Jenkins, the oldest of the characters, had spent the late 1970s as the President of the European Commission. He is overbearingly urbane - his reaction to being served macaroni cheese (a recipe from the up-and-coming Delia Smith) is pricelessly snobbish; but equally Debbie knows that a vintage Chateau Lafite will go a long way towards mollifying him.

The cast is very good at revealing the personal mannerisms of the characters without merely caricaturing them (Roger Allam in particular catching Roy Jenkins's slight speech impediment as well as his personality), and also in revealing the tensions between them, and their extreme (and justifiable) prickliness at any sign that they are being manipulated - as they clearly are by David Owen's actions in inviting them at different times, and in arranging a press conference without their knowledge.

The play is probably too heavy on exposition, as the issues are no longer in the forefront of people's minds, so that the set piece speeches from each of the four are more declamatory than would be normal in even a politician's kitchen; however it is vital that the background be sufficiently clear in order for us to understand the pressure each of them is feeling, and to perceive that their solidarity at the end contains plenty of room for later disruption (as proved to be the case). 

Furthermore, it was a bit disconcerting to have comments about the state of the Labour Party as it was in early 1981 resonate so clearly in some of the audience's minds with the current situation. When David Owen exploded at the beginning of the play with anger about the previous day's conference, he very nearly had a round of applause, which would have destroyed the attention required to watch a play about recent history (as opposed to an opinion piece or a political interview). It would be interesting to know whether the play would seem both successful and interesting at some future time when the fortunes of the Labout Party outside the theatre were not so similar to what we were being told about on stage.