Five years is a long time in the theatre. It’s hard to believe that it was only in 2012 that This House was staged at the National. It wasn’t James Graham’s first play: Neil McPherson of the tiny Finborough is owed applause for encouraging him early on. But it was the drama that took Graham, still barely 30, to a big audience and announced his particular idea of political drama. Nifty, buoyant, topical. Above all, popular. Plays – such as Privacy – that make their points structurally as well as in debate. Plays that can capture a West End audience.
Graham has double-proved that last point over the past few weeks. His Murdoch play, Ink, transferred to the West End from the Almeida last month; now Labour of Love joins it a few doors down. A light-on-its feet canter through the past 27 years of the Labour party, it neatly encapsulates the uneasy alliance between old and New Labour in the bumpy romance between a constituency agent and a Blairite MP. The local party, in Nottinghamshire (in his 20s, Graham worked as a doorkeeper at Nottingham Playhouse), versus Westminster. The traditional symbol and the new brand. The Red Flag and the red rose: “looks pretty and is full of pricks”.
There are some sketchy background performances and an over-Penelope-Keithed one from Rachael Stirling as the MP’s improbable wife. But Martin Freeman fans will find it worth a ticket to see him as that MP, breaking out of respectability with a hand-flipping dance, with little leaps. Tamsin Greig addicts can revel in her ability to do ballistic farce and po-faced drawl without looking as if she thinks herself amusing. She ages subtly too – from droopy bob to crop – finding what she calls “the lack of oil in the joints”.
Jeremy Herrin’s production skips along, spinning the romance, telling dodgy jokes (like the one about the temporary bisexual: “bi for now”). It doesn’t go deep into Labour policy, but makes the divisions clear. And as Labour of Love runs backwards then loops forwards again it indicates, without didacticism, how little the new Labour looks like New Labour.
Importantly, politics go right through to the seats in this comedy. There are some £10 tickets for all performances. Graham is clear: it’s daft, he argues, to say you are “engaging in a national conversation about the direction of the left… if you’re going to fill your Victorian theatre with people who can afford expensive tickets”.
