Theatre
Putting politics centre stage
Published 04 December 2006
The story of a gay seduction mirrors Tony's relationship with Dubbya
Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?
Royal Court, London SW1
The title of Caryl Churchill's new play is also its first line. Jack, who is English, and Sam, an American, are sitting together on a sofa on an otherwise blacked-out stage. We are witnessing an intimate moment between two men. Both have their shoes off. Both have clearly met before. Perhaps they are former lovers. They certainly would like to be lovers. Desire hangs in the air. Jack is being seduced by Sam, who has the upper hand. When Sam invites Jack to go away with him, the Brit abandons all other commitments: wife, children, even his work. The scene is sexy but also cosy as the two men drink coffee in their socks. Fade to black.
When the lights return, the arrangement on stage is much the same. Only the sofa has been raised a little. Jack and Sam are still involved in verbal foreplay, yet their talk is now of politics.
"So help me out here," drawls Sam, as he draws a global picture of preventing elections in "South Korea, Guatemala, Brazil, Congo, Indonesia, Greece". "I'm on it," says Jack helpfully.
It's clear something else is up. Jack (Stephen Dillane) is affable and courteous, even a bit timid. He refers to God a lot. Sam (Ty Burrell) is grandiose, powerful, a man who dismisses global problems - "Bye-bye Allende" - with easy condescension. This is no normal gay chat-up scene. This is a sofa at the White House. Or Downing Street, with Sam (Uncle Sam) trying to get Jack (John Bull) into bed with him. Churchill has refigured current affairs in the guise of a gay affair.
Sam needs Jack. He'll be fine without him, but the sofa (which gradually rises during the 90-minute piece, until it ends up suspended like a cloud in heaven) is too lonely for just one person. And so Sam would like to cosy up with Jack. But on his own terms.
It's always intriguing to imagine private conversations between those in power. Recently, Peter Morgan's The Queen and David Hare's Stuff Happens entertained and diverted by putting invented words into the mouths of politicians. Here, however, Churchill achieves something cleverer, while dispensing with the irritating spectre of impressionism. Burrell and Dillane, each of whom has terrific stage presence, don't worry about imitating Bush and Blair. Their skill, under James Macdonald's subtle direction, is to depict the shimmering desire hanging between them. We do the rest.
And so we have the delightful spectacle of America persuading a foot-dragging Britain to capitulate to all sorts of dreadful things in the language of sexual game-playing. At one point, Jack appears to criticise Sam for going too far. Immediately, Sam goes off in a sulk. "On my side?" he demands of Jack. "Fuck off then back." And when even the threat of being chucked doesn't work, Sam reels him back in with the ultimate emotional hook: "No, no, no - the towers."
At one point Sam is alone on the sofa. He goes through a long soliloquy of torture practices: ". . . play tape of women and children screaming in next room and tell prisoner it's his wife and children, sometimes it is; hang up with hands tied behind back . . ." After we have endured this, Jack turns up with customary English niceness. Is this how Bush and Blair are? The unprincipled sadist, desperate for world domination, wildly in love with the charmingly polite Brit, himself willing to lose all in the name of his devotion to big ol' Uncle Sam?
Envisaging Bush and Blair as if at a gay bar, even showing them at one point sharing a line of coke, is a wickedly delightful conceit. Yet the overriding cynicism of the politics prevents it from venturing into the sheer naughtiness of, say, Extras (which had Ronnie Corbett taking drugs backstage at the Baftas). I would say that the evening has more than a seed of veracity at its heart, and Churchill, whose skill at writing dialogue is unquestionable, has given us the most dramatically intriguing solution to the enduring problem of portraying politics on stage.
For further information and booking details, log on to www.royalcourttheatre.com
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