Night off

Apologies for blog drought -- but busy(ish) week at work and return of social life. So Tuesday was dinner with bonus private view thrown in, Wednesday hobnobbing at the tennis club (but not playing - am officially "non-playing" now) and discussing London elections with bunches of Boristas, and Thursday the theatre.

First theatre trip this year and the light relief was a play about a life spent aiming to be Prime Minister, which ends with a government in chaos and departure from Downing Street in failure. But it was Jeremy Irons, not Rory Bremner, and the PM in question was Harold Macmillan. Some very big psychological flaws on display - pushy mother worried son would never quite make it; frustrated flirtation with catholicism; near death experience in the Somme... resulting in lifelong haunting by alter ego of non-dead Captain Macmillan. Quite an interesting romp through 20th century -- though a bit of history for dummies. And some really clunky dialogue - and some rather obvious anachronisms -- did Selwyn Lloyd really agonise about what the plan was for post-war reconstruction of Egypt after the Suez planned regime change? But the audience liked it.

But interesting nonetheless... not least to see how government was in meltdown the week I was born (Suez + Hungarian uprising) and what the special relationship felt like then, albeit with the UK as gung-ho aggressor. But the real star were the sets and the recreation of the Somme, the Algerian desert (HM not only survived the Somme, he survived a plane crash in North Africa -- and as far as this shows a vast amount of champagne and cigarettes). Politicians in those days had a rather more lively past than being a Spad and then a brief period after getting a seat and before being elected as a communications consultant.

But although the author tried to make the parallels with today in a rather heavy-handed way, what it really looked like by the end was the Major government. A Chancellor becomes PM; lasting legacy is popularising gambling - Premium bonds vs the lottery; initially popular but then is derailed by European humiliation (though De Gaulle rather than Bill Cash and IDS) and sex scandals -- though Profumo was rather more stylish than David Mellor in a Chelsea strip. Not sure a Major nostalgia evening was quite what Howard Brenton had in mind....