Chris Eldon Lee reviews “Feed The Beast” which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until Saturday 2nd May and then at The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich.
Michael Goodlad is the kind of Prime Minister I would love to vote for;
a true, principled statesman. Swept unexpectedly into No 10, he sets out to build a new, fair and square nation with more nurses, un-messed with education, less poverty and fewer missiles. He’s ideal – but dangerously idealistic. He’s determined to rise above the squalor of parliamentary politics.
He also intends to ignore the press. “Tell them to mind their own business”, he says. His plan is to give them nothing but policy – “no personality stuff”. “The press will not set my agenda.” In other words, he refuses to Feed The Beast. The question is, how will The Beast bite back?
Preparing for the power struggle, the PM hires a straining-at-the-leash Red Top Rottweiler as his press officer. Let battle commence….
This is an amazingly perceptive and time play. ‘Dr Who’ writer Steve Thompson takes us only slightly into the future – into a world where the public really are sick of the same old stories and vote for something new; and where Internet forums rule supreme. Sadly; probably the day after tomorrow.
This is a play fizzing with topical traumas. The writing is exceptionally exciting and energetic and a thunderingly good cast pick up Thompson’s jubilant jokes and lancing lines and slice their way through the evening.
“Planning the next election is like planning your funeral when you’re a teenager”. “You have to handle the press – or they will handle you”. “Social media? It’s death by a thousand clicks”.
Gerald Kyd is outstandingly dynamic as the bright-new-dawn PM…
a deeply thinking bulldozer-for-good. He plays him as a wholly caring human being, trying to rise above the rat race without being torpedoed by his own humanity. He’s a man with a true, benevolent vision – and a lot to learn about the dark arts he eschews.
Shaun Mason is terrifyingly super-real as his raunchy, go-get-em press advisor. He’s alarmingly amoral in a moralising office; the realist to Goodlad’s idealist. He knows that in the dog-eat-dog media world, you have to have the sharpest teeth. Mason plays him as a manipulative man barely in control, belligerent and boorish and scenting blood. It’s a remarkable performance. I hated his character and marvelled at his acting.
But this is far from a two-way fight.
Director Peter Rowe has assembled six hugely talented and versatile ensemble actors. He seems to just wind them up and let them go…each character a star turn in their own right. The political manoeuvring (within whatever party it is) is almost like a playground game at times; as if that is the only way the participants can cope with the consequences. Goodlad is increasingly frightened by The Beast he is trying to tame…especially when it’s as seductive as Amy Marston’s columnist creation ‘Heather’;
a beauty at The Beast, red in lips and nails.
Meanwhile, the family scenes are a delicately observed haven from the hellfire. Badria Timimi and Aimee Powell tenderly infuse the antidote of love and affection into the lifeblood of their man at No 10…and he protects them from the press with all his sacrificial might.
As you might imagine, it all starts to go wrong. Even ideal men are only human.
Steve Thompson’s message is fearfully clear. We are doomed. He presents a sharply focused picture of a world in which elected democracy is terminally undermined by the clicking classes. Even the powerful journalist Heather is helplessly in the gun sights of the new agenda setters…the uncontrollable trolls of anarchy.
It’s a remarkable evening and, I fancy, a landmark production in the history of political theatre. Robin Day would love it.
Photo : Patrick Baldwin
Visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk for information about Birmingham Rep.