Brave New World (The Hunt for Tony Blair, Channel 4)

Satire departs in varying degrees from the facts; indeed, this departure is part of what makes it satirical. Its intent can register in a slight exaggeration of a vocal inclination, or in depicting recognisable persons as animals or inanimate objects. The Hunt For Tony Blair presents a familiar cast in a recognisably different universe, not one created specifically for satirical purposes, but drawing on our knowledge of genre. Blair, Mandelson, Brown and the rest scuttle around in a Cold War-era thriller, which is perhaps suitable given that as a piece of satire it’s a little out of date (one reference to trusting the bankers and a mention of Afghanistan apart, there’s little that speaks to Cameron’s Britain).

And yes, the central theme is Blair as a Tory Boy shyster, on the run from a murder charge: the stuff of a million placards. But don’t let that put you off (too much): this is slick, smart stuff, and a lot better than anything else I’ve seen from The Comic Strip. There aren’t too many outstanding jokes, but the conceit introduces us to a black-and-white world where the theme from A Summer Place swoons over the action, bobbies toot on their whistles while ineffectually chasing fugitives, and the Evening Post is sold at London train stations; but it’s also a world with Iraq, New Labour, and an endless stream of political biographies.

The show is all about this world and its stylish execution: there is little attempt to dig into the coils of politics or present the New Labour years in a remotely realistic fashion. A couple of the actors could pass for distant relatives of their characters (notably Nigel Planer as a drooping Peter Mandelson), but in general there’s little attempt at physically matching the targets; Michael Sheen can rest easy. Stephen Mangan does essay the familiar Blair mannerisms, but it’s not so much a portrait as an aide-memoire to remind us who he’s meant to be. Jennifer Saunders does this even more blatantly with Margaret Thatcher; you’re never in any doubt that you’re watching a comedienne doing a Maggie impression (one of the better things in the show, as it happens). The fun lies in seeing how these characters appear differently in this world, and how it reflects on our perceptions of them in ours. Blair’s perpetually nervous grin suggested a man forever on the defensive; here, he’s got Robbie Coltrane’s hulking detective on his tail. Mandelson’s combination of entitlement and false deferrence to whomever he speaks makes him an ideal subject for police cross-examination. Thatcher is perfect as a faded diva, with Norman Tebbit as the butler playing her newsreel footage of her martial triumphs. Not all the characters are placed so delicately: the portrayals of Bush and Brown are one-dimensional, and the likes of Cherie Blair and Alistair Campbell get cameos at best. But by placing these rogues in a glamorous age, it emphasises their seediness without spelling it out for us. And – who knows – maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to portray them as yesterday’s men and women, their problems seemingly as remote from us as tiny black-and-white televisions, smoking cigarettes indoors, and Barbara Windsor’s East End accent.

Not with a Bang, but a Tinkle: NF Simpson

Prayer: Let us throw back our heads and laugh at reality:

Response: Which is an illusion caused by mescalin deficiency.

(from A Resounding Tinkle)

NF Simpson, perhaps Britain’s most influential absurdist playwright, suffered a fatal underdose of mescalin at the end of August.

Before I start, a confession: I have not seen any of Simpson’s plays. My appreciation of him is therefore necessarily more limited than might be ideal. There is an argument that the best way to judge a playwright is by the words on the page, avoiding the risk of any actors, directors or other interested parties making it look better than it actually is. Tempting though this thought may be, I think it must be dismissed. Judging a play in this fashion is like judging a painter only by examining the oils in their bottles. Nevertheless, after reading Simpson’s two most famous works, I have formed an impression which is hopefully worth a blog post at any rate.

Reading A Resounding Tinkle and One-Way Pendulum, I was struck by somewhat contradictory thoughts. Each script was fiercely inventive, but each relied heavily on a particular comic approach which I feel would not work nearly as well nowadays. Humour can date to much the same degree as anything else. There must have been a time, perhaps between the evolution of the opposable thumb and the cultivation of fire, when stories finishing with ‘...and that was just the men!’ were cutting edge stuff. Simpson’s humour was of a much more individual kind, mixing absurdism, farcical events and a recognisably English whimsy which litters both scripts (the playwright complaining that most of his work came to him in Portuguese; the judge asking whether the defendant has any “negro blood”, and being told that he might have one or two bottles of it in his room).

What does not work so well is Simpson’s use of the satiric/absurdist set-piece, in which characters in a recognisable setting earnestly debate or work through some Big Idea, in the process reducing it to something smaller: comedians discussing the purpose of the universe; the spoof radio service quoted from above; the trial which takes up almost half of One-Way Pendulum. These came across as clunky, at times didactic. The hand of the author is too readily discerned in them, carefully positioning his mannequins for maximum effect; the point of the exercise is too obvious. One feels as though each such scene should finish with the author emerging from the wings (as happens in A Resounding Tinkle – another rather creaky device) to triumphantly declare ‘QED!’

I suspect the absurdism which runs through Simpson’s writing might be the root of the problem. The great strength and limitation of the Theatre of the Absurd was the sweeping assumptions it was premised upon. If your claim is that society or the family or middle-class certainties are not just wrong or need to be revised, but are meaningless through-and-through, the temptation will be to present them in as dismissive a manner as possible.  The result tended to be plays which made strong, even thrilling claims, but which had little subtlety to reward closer inspection. Kenneth Tynan, a staunch defender of Simpson, noted that few plays by Eugene Ionesco survived a second hearing. I fear this may also be true of Simpson’s work.