A BRITISH BASTARD STALKS THROUGH HISTORY
What’s to be done about truly awful people: amoral, selfishly irresponsible, arrogant and greedy? A time-honoured British approach is to meet them with mocking laughter, provided the monster is reasonably lively and offers the odd eccentric novelty in his (or her) roguery. We hate prigs more than villains, it’s our national problem. So Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, who gave us here the touching “Spike” here, revelled in the rediscovery of AG Macdonell’s forgotten 1938 spoof memoir of a fictional MP called Edward Fox-Ingleby. A sort of precursor of Rik Mayall as Alan B’Stard in the 1980s, or the realities which occur in figures like Chips Channon, Alan Clark and – yes, obviously – Boris Johnson and several of his mini-mes.
They have framed the play as Fox-Ingleby dictating his memoirs, in the most marvellous Clubland set by Paul Hart, heavy wood, green paint and terrible old portraits which , gloriously, can be swung aside to reveal other things or in one case burst open to reveal our hero’s ferally brutal old Granny. James Mack, all bright white teeth and caddish moustache, paces around dictating to Rhiannon Neads as his secretary, interrupted by Mitesh Soni as a researcher who somehow can’t find the heroic and noble ancestry the cad claims.
Actually, all through the play these two sidekicks score far more laughs than Mack himself because it’s hard to be both unredeemedly nasty and properly funny. But Soni and Neads are terrific, with revue-speed costume (and gender) changes as they neatly become Eton and Oxford friends, mistresses, victims or enemies., Soni reappearsover and over again as his nemesis, from college to WW1 to political and press enmity. Neads is comically perfect in a kaleidoscope of roles from Bullingdon pal to estate worker to chorus-girl turned fake suffragette.
But they carry the show, have to because even apart from the unrelieved nastiness of the Cad there’s an ongoing problem: the authors make a point of parallels with today’s vainglorious and self-seeking cads in public life (even artfully adding a walk-on by having Fox-Ingleby claim to be “too honourable” and organizing a “straightforward shooting party). But Fox-Ingleby is a creature of the past, only faintly reflected and diluted today in his great-grandchildren. It all takes place before, during and after the 1914-18 war., and when a caricature is a bit dated, it can pall. Jokes about Eton and foxhunting are terribly stale now, despite the brio Mack brings to both, and the domination of Edwardian landowners is gone. So he risks becoming a bit of a bore. It works best when he’s thwarted, as in his attempt to avoid going to the front in the war but still wanting medals to impress women.
The second half is better, because he goes into politics, and we can enjoy the barbs more as history pre-echoes the recent years: a chancer who gets a safe seat, after reputational sabotage of the sitting member, a turncoat whose manifesto promises and party loyalties are rapidly reversed, and some good financial corruption stuff with Soni brilliant as a dull but very rich American financier (Fox-Ingleby gets away with it even during the Wall St crash).
So he romps on, a timeless figure of disgrace. There’s a grand twist about how he foils the muckracking journalist at the end, and a very Borisian final lectern speech as he mourns being a “distraction” from real politics.
Watermill.org.uk to 22 March
Rating 3
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