Loyalty at Hampstead is two sensations in one. First, it’s a sensational drama written by the partner of a key Blair aide, Jonathan Powell, about the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Second, it’s a sensational finale to Mr Powell’s career. The author, Sarah Helm, records events unfolding in London and Washington from her unique perspective at the epicentre of world politics, in her bedroom. Overheard phone conversations and a single visit to Downing Street form the entire corpus of her research. To make the thing larky and good fun she splices the tense international negotiations with domestic jinks, flooded pipes, broken burglar alarms, toddlers with bashed bonces, and so on.
The factual detail is all ancient history now but the revelations about Blair are fascinating. He likes Paul Smith shirts and adores Church’s shoes. He polishes his footwear meticulously — it’s almost a meditative act — before appearing in public. Some wag on his team christened Gordon Brown and his henchmen ‘Darth Vader and the imperial storm troopers’. Blair’s egoism shines through in minor details. When he plays football, apparently, he never passes the ball. Dressing for dinner at No. 10, he expects Powell to wait on him like a lady’s maid. When Powell picks up an apple from a fruit bowl Blair is mortified. ‘Jonathan! Those are mine!’
It’s a pity the script is so amateurish and shambolic. The rhythm is destroyed by constant phone calls and messy little cameo roles. It’s like watching a foal standing up on an ice rink. The characters are not the kind of people you’d ask around for a pizza unless you were planning to poison it. Sarah Helm portrays herself as a posturing anti-war hysteric and her partner as a humourless PR wonk in thrall to a charismatic superstar hell-bent on starting an invasion.
The cast are fine. Maxine Peake, in the lead, emphasises the angry blonde author’s charm and breezy sensuality. Michael Simkins glowers magnificently as the head of SIS. As Blair, Patrick Baladi seems muted, as if he’s been ordered to play it straight, but he gets a huge laugh from one tiny gesture. Standing in front of a mirror at No.10 he says ‘Hi’ to himself. Blair rehearsing unrehearsed Blair is just so Blair.
Because the material lacks a proper climax, Helm has invented one. She attends a Downing Street dinner where Blair is told that Rumsfeld faked intelligence sources in order to trick Britain into war. Outraged, she threatens to walk out on to the steps of No. 10 and reveal this to the world. At an early stage in the script’s development some shrewd insider might have counselled against introducing this daft (and presumably fictional) plot twist. Someone like Jonathan Powell. Had the job as script adviser been offered he should have accepted it. It’s hard to see where else he could work. This is a man who lets his partner listen in on all his calls — albeit with small fry like the British prime minister and the American president — and transcribe their contents in order to further her career. Who’d employ him now? Not even News International.
At the Arcola there’s an excellent, timely and unsettling play about journalism around the world. In developing countries reporting is an extreme sport. Censorship, in the form of the assassin’s bullet, can be horrifically successful. The murder in 2006 of a single Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, has cowed a generation of writers into silence. In Mexico the justice system is so corrupt that only 2 per cent of crimes are investigated. Who knows how few result in convictions?
Campaigning journalist Lydia Cacho exposed a particularly grisly ring of criminal businessmen who got their kicks by raping kidnapped teenage girls. Cacho was herself kidnapped, sexually molested and threatened with death unless she retracted her allegations. She refused. In the end her notoriety saved her life. After her ordeal, she happened to pass one of the accused men collecting his luggage from the carousel at Heathrow. His body language amazed her. ‘He was afraid of me.’ The show ends on that optimistic note.
So many plays are just circus routines or museum pieces. This is a living, breathing piece of propaganda in the best sense. It reminds us how fortunate we are to live in a society where phone hacking is the worst abuse the press will stoop to. It jerks us from our complacency and argues, quietly but with overwhelming force, that liberal democracy is not inherent in any community’s gene code. It has to be replanted and refreshed by each new generation. I’m no fan of forcing theatre on anyone but if every child in the country saw this play our future would be a smidgeon less insecure.
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