Theatre
The Absence of War, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Neil Cooper
Four stars
For those who remember when there was something called old Labour, there's something heart-breaking watching Jeremy Herrin's vital revival of David Hare's fictionalisation of the Labour Party's 1992 General Election campaign. Herrin's production for Headlong, with the Rose Theatre Kingston and Sheffield Theatres on tour, opens with a driven coterie of speech-writers, minders, spin doctors and pin-striped PRs flitting urgently around unreconstructed party leader George Jones. Given everything that has happened in UK politics in the two decades since Hare's play first appeared, what follows now looks like a final fanfare for the common man who has been replaced by the business of bad management.
In this way, Reece Dinsdale's theatre-loving Jones is thrust from strategy meeting to TV studio to podium, burying his core beliefs until even he forgets what they are as he's betrayed by oily careerists on the make. Where Hare's play remains a prophecy of the state we're in now, Herrin's production also reveals it as a history lesson which the current wave of sharp-suited political classes must learn from. With a real life General Election looming, they probably won't.
Dinsdale cuts a knowingly tragic figure as Jones as the rest of Herrin's thirteen-strong cast, who include a dynamic James Harkness as Jones' political minder by turns pander, protect, plot and scheme about him. "Let's become Tories," Jones flails ironically after he's lost. "They always win."
As the audience leaves, it's to the muted strains of D:Ream's Blairite anthem, Things Can only Get Better. As history has proven, for most people who bought into the New Labour con trick they didn't, but they may yet.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article