Churchill in Moscow

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 3 March 2025

Tom Littler directs Roger Allam as Churchill and Peter Forbes as Stalin, with Julius d'Silva as Molotov (Soviet Foreign Minister), Alan Cox as Archie Clark Kerr (British ambassador to the USSR), Tamara Greatrex as Svetlana Stalin, Jo Herbert as the British interpreter Sally Powell and Elisabeth Snegir as the Russian interpreter Olga Dovzhenko in Howard Brenton's play concerning the meeting Churchill had with Stalin in Moscow in August 1942. (The main characters are historical, but the two interpreters are fictional).

The principal reason for Churchill's journey was to inform Stalin personally that the Allies had decided that it was impossible to launch an invasion of western Europe immediately: it would have to wait until at least 1943 (in the event, the D-Day landings and the invasion of Italy did not take place until 1944). He felt that a face to face meeting was essential to deliver this bad news in good faith, rather than relying on telegrams or telephone calls. But it was of course a delicate matter, as the German invasion of the USSR had begun and the battle of Stalingrad actually began while Churchill was in Moscow.

Brenton makes good use of the interpreters he has chosen to invent. At the opening of the play Stalin speaks in Russian, requiring the audience to wait until Olga translates into English before understanding. In an inspired move, Churchill then speaks in complete gobbledygook, so that once again we must wait for Sally to interpret before we understand his response. This technique is used sparingly; most of the time English is spoken throughout, though the business of interpreting continues unobtrusively except when either Station or Churchill mistrusts what is being said or requires (or impatiently dismisses) immediate clarification. The interactions of the wider delegations are suggested b y the occasional presence of Molotov and Kerr, while the teenage Svetlana wanders around practising her English by reading David Copperfield until she is briefly introduced to Churchill during a late-night confab between the two leaders.

This was of course an extremely consequential meeting; the seriousness of the issues is always before us even as the outsize personalities of both the leaders dominate the stage. Wisely neither actor simply imitates the historical character. Roger Allam has something of Churchill's awkward gait and rhetorical flair, and his curious dress sense (for much of the time he is in a boiler suit, except for being in a nightshirt one evening and formal wear for the reception the next). Stalin, in his usual military style dress, speaks with a West Country accent, cleverly indicating the Georgian provincialism sneered at by the urban Russian elites.

The presence of the interpreters not only provides some comic relief arising from their tasks. They also have a brief interaction outside their official capacities injecting a slight nod to the anxieties and prejudices of the ordinary people enduring the war and the volatile political tensions surrounding them. And Brenton uses the idea of interpretation and the responsibility of the translating staff to be accurate - whether literally or thematically - as an intriguing emollient to the fractious and potentially disastrous rift which otherwise seems impossible to bridge. Despite their qualms, it seems that the interpreters saved the day.

A thoroughly enjoyable insight into what to many (myself included) is a little-known meeting.

Cancelling Socrates

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 11 June 2022

Tom Littler directs Jonathan Hyde as Socrates, Hannah Morrish as his wife Xanthippe (and also as a Daemon), Robert Mountford as his friend Euthyphro (and also as a Gaoler) and Sophie Ward as the hetaira Aspasia in Howard Brenton's new play Cancelling Socrates based on the four Platonic dialogues long published in the Penguin Classics series as The Last Days of Socrates.

The Jermyn Street Theatre is a small basement space underneath a restaurant, so the play is kept in an intimate form, the stage bare except for a fluted column, two pedestals for food offerings and a bench. The scene is amusingly set by having the sign pointing to the toilets in both Greek and English, and the formal announcements about starting times, switching off mobile phones and wearing facemasks given first in Greek and then in English translation (presumably modern rather than classical Greek). Indeed, when he first appears, the snippets of conversation involving Euthyphro, a young merchant who gives his name to the Platonic dialogue opening the sequence, come from invisible Greek speakers, though fortunately for us he answers in English.

Soon he meets Socrates, engagingly played as an eccentric with a powerful mind and a twitchy manner by Jonathan Hyde, Euthyphro soon being ambushed into a discussion about what constitutes justice and holiness, and whether the gods are just (particularly if different gods support different sides in a war, for example) before a conversation about their several reasons for attending the magistrates' court emerges. Euthyphro is, as usual, trapped by the Socratic line of questioning, but he is appalled at the flippancy with which Socrates seems to regard his own approaching case. 

Wisely the play does not directly present the Apology, Socrates's formal speeches to the court in which he defended himself against the accusation of sacrilege and corrupting the young, and then proposed an alternative to the death penalty voted by the jurors on his conviction (the defendant had the right to propose an alternative). There is no way the theatre could suggest a court hearing in which there were 501 jurors. Instead there is an extremely interesting and tense discussion between Aspasia and Xanthippe (a discussion that Plato would never have conceived of writing), the former appealing to politics and the state as the protectors of civic life, and the latter advancing the claims of family. Xanthippe has brought finely spun birds-nest pastries which she has made herself; Aspasia provides the new-fangled Egyptian delicacy she calls 'baklava' but scornfully dismisses any knowledge of how it is made, since a slave made it (that is what slaves are for). Irritatingly, Socrates, when he appears between his speeches, ignores his wife's cakes in favour of the exciting novelty of the pistachio-rich baklava. But Xanthippe knows her husband better than the worldly-wise Aspasia: she realises with horror that he will improvise his second speech rather than deliver the politic proposal prepared for him by Aspasia, and the result is disaster: the death penalty is upheld.

A cynical and down-to-earh gaoler presents the possibility that Socrates might simply escape from gaol rather than face the looming execution: as is cusomtanry for those with connections, the Gaoler has been bribed to let this happen. This covers the material in the short dialogue Crito but in a more comedic vein as the Gaoler's practical concerns (he needs th money for roof repairs at home) almost inure him to the restless Socratic pursuit of knowledge. The final scene of Socrates's life, depicted as an extended discussion of the afterlife among a host of friends in the Phaedo, is here presented in far more mundane fashion with only the Gaoler and Aspasia in attendace (Xanthippe having safely gone into exile with her sons), and the mysterious Daemon apparently present only to the great philosiopher's own consciousness.

The peculiarities of the Athenian court system and the weirdness of the position Socrates adopts - his apparent flippancy disguising a fearsome curiosity about deep philospohical questions - are brilliantly conveyed by the cast without stretching our patience or overloading us with too much informaton. At the same time there are some sly moments when the Athenian world and our own are shown to be not all that far apart: the trial takes place not long after a hideous plague beset the city, followed by a gruelling war (not that the UK is directly waging war at the moment, as Athens had been, but the point stands), and a waspish comment such as 'the young believe it's their absolute right not to be upset' drew wry chuckles from the mainly elderly audience.

These particular Platonic dialogues, among the most obviously dramatic of his works, have been finely brought to the stage in this excellent production.