LOOK BEYOND THE LETTUCE
It is a tribute to Greg Wilkinson’s monologue play that I had not previously seen the rise and fall of Liz Truss as having a gripping dramatic line. It had seemed like just the final mad flailings of the age of Boris and Covid, before the Rishi lull: ridiculous, a passing joke, nothing much to do with either Britain’s past or future. But this tightly researched, unexpectedly fair one-woman drama made a difference.
Emma WIlkinson Wright, first seen silent at her desk as we settle in, is waiting for Graham Brady or someone to come in and deliver the expected final chop. She is, carefully, in appearance very like the real Liz Truss, neat bob and bodycon dress . She observes as she powders her nose the need always to “look good”. The then embarks on an account of her life, assisted by the nimble-voiced Steve Nallon recorded offstage doing a series of voices: the schoolteacher she defied , the exhilaratingly political Oxford friends, her Westminster allies and, of course, the ghost of Margaret Thatcher. Who is at first Liz’s inspiration (though interestingly, not as much as Chancellor Lawson). Thatcher in fact finally delivers a rather damning verdict, pitiless at the Truss defeat. She I suppose was strong willed too , tempting to emulate, but cleverer.
What Wilkinson – through the performer – has caught and played with is the extraordinary self-confidence that fuels this woman, combined with a real (and to many of us baffling) sense of her thrill at the very process of politics: leafleting, speaking, working out tactics, networking, finding mentors and then judging them. Her economic theory is all about energy: wanting to move fast and break things and face down slowcoaches, orthodoxy and regulation. Fighting suits her more than quiet thought, and revealing is her almost girlish adoration for Kwazi Kwarteng – “like an educated Mohammed Ali!”. She strides around, thrilled to rise to be Foreign Secretary, dizzying. Sometimes she breaks into karaoke, as with her friend “TC” – Therese Coffey. But she is not made ridiculous. Like any excellent actor she draws us a long way into herself, uncomfortably. Scraps of her real speeches – including the cheese moment – are done from a lectern in the corner, straight. Bits of her theory are banged up on a whiteboard.
Becoming PM at last she sacks people, crying “I can really bloody do this!”. Urged to take her financial reforms slower she barks “what’s the point of moderation?” and says that it would be like getting her friend “TC” going at the karaoke with just a thimbleful of whisky when what’s necessary is a damn great pint and a cigar.
But the crux of the story is not her final downfall – though the slow hard realization of what the markets are doing is brilliantly done, cracks in her steeliness showing minute after minute, the lettuce joke genuinely upsetting her – “humour is our national religion” she says, with the fury of an apostate. Nallon’s brilliant evocation of the previously encouraging voices of her backers – notably Jacob Rees-Mogg – gradually make her understand what’s happening: national potential bankruptcy.
That’s all good, but the crux beforehand is the moment when the Queen dies, and suddenly at the funeral Truiss is plunged into something bigger than politics, bigger than her: nationhood, ritual, something run by surefooted courtiers and military, apolitical. She has to be taught to curtsey by an unseen Rees-Mogg who ends up having to demonstrate how to do it. After that there is something almost touching about her storming towards “A Budget true and good and beautiful!” and watching it collapse.
It was second-preview I saw, and I suspected the end would be been tightened (and I now gather that it has, the show within its natural 90 mins including interval). But in that ending there is a real warning. Off to America, thrilled by its energy and extremes, I watched the stage Truss reflecting on Trump, Farage, and how the key to getting a followership when people feel hard-up is horribly simple: just a identify a “THEY” as the enemy.
It’s a pretty remarkable couple of hours. Honour to performer, author, and director Anthony Shrubsall. `Not long left to catch it, but if you need something absolutely non-Christmassy….
whitebeartheatre.co.uk to 14 December
theatreCat 