A theatre programme lists the characters on one side of the page, with the actors playing them printed opposite. At a new play, audiences are much more likely to recognise the names of the cast on the right than the dramatis personae on the left: we won’t know who “Shirley” or “Rupert” or “Alan” is until the dramatist tells us. In many premieres these days, though, it’s common for those being portrayed to be at least as well-known as those playing them.
In Limehouse, which recently opened at London’s Donmar theatre, the parts include the politicians Shirley Williams and David Owen, while later in the year, on the same stage, performers will impersonate BBC executive Alan Yentob and fundraiser Camila Batmanghelidjh in a musical about the failure of their Kids Company charity.
The Donmar has become a sort of living Madame Tussauds, having also staged Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon, John Logan’s Red (about the artist Mark Rothko) and Privacy, which explored the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Josie Rourke, the theatre’s artistic director, argues that bio-drama is widespread because “in a post-truth, anti-expert, fake news culture, people are more and more interested in exploring real events and history, and how they are interpreted”.
Rourke directed Privacy, which was written by James Graham, who has become the busiest practitioner of the Who’s Who script. Graham’s This House, seen at the National in 2012 and revived in the West End this winter, recreated the final days of the pre-Thatcher Labour government in 1979. The dramatist has two more pieces of life writing opening this year: Ink, which depicts Rupert Murdoch’s revamping of the Sun newspaper in 1969, and Quiz, fictionalising the so-called “coughing Major” controversy over alleged cheating on the TV series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Graham, however, doesn’t think of himself as biographical playwright: “I don’t separate these plays in my head from ones I’ve written with made-up people. You apply the same process to each, in terms of what makes a satisfying character, structure and narrative.”
Echoing this view is playwright Steve Waters, whose Limehouse imagines the lunch, at Owen’s house in east London, on January 25, 1981, at which he and three other politicians – Roy Jenkins, Williams and Bill Rodgers – agreed the document that would lead to the quartet leaving the Labour Party to form the SDP. “You have to get to the point where it feels as if you are making the characters up,” says Waters. “You can’t write with two memoirs open on your desk, and feel the real-life people looking over your shoulder. You have to read, write and then check.”
The use of real people and events as source material, though, does raise legal and ethical issues. The Donmar “probably does take more legal advice than the average theatre”, says Rourke. While she was working on Privacy, “questions came through, via intermediaries, from governments about what we were doing. Which was obviously an unusual experience for theatre-makers.”
Although Graham is conscious of ethical concerns over accuracy and privacy, he disputes the view that bio-drama is inevitably a controversial form: “I haven’t got a tick list of people I want to destroy, or historical periods I want to misrepresent. I just want to shine a light on different periods in order to make better sense of what’s happening in our present and our future.” Graham, Waters and Rourke all have a policy of seeking to talk to living source characters. So will Graham ask Murdoch to help with Ink? “Yes. I’m in the process of going through various different webs and systems to give him an opportunity to meet me, if he wants to, which I’d really like.” Lord Owen was the first of the SDP founders to get back to Waters, who was surprised and impressed by the politician’s general instruction to “do whatever you want”.
Graham has never been contacted by anyone upset by their representation, although he has sometimes rewritten scenes because a participant has provided new information about timing or details of events.
Owen suggests that politicians may be more sanguine about dramatisation than most people because denigration comes with the job – “Yes, Spitting Image hardened my heart” – while other subjects of theatricalisation are more apprehensive about depiction. In June, the Donmar will premiere Commitee, which is subtitled: The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Takes Oral Evidence on Whitehall’s Relationship with Kids Company. The musical’s lyrics are verbatim extracts from evidence given to MPs by witnesses including Batmanghelidjh and Yentob.
“Alan [Yentob] asked to meet us,” recalls Rourke. “And so Kate Pakenham [executive director] and I talked to him. He expressed an interest in coming in to rehearsals, and meeting the authors and the company. Which is fine by us.” Rourke says that she also had “a long telephone call” with Batmanghelidjh, who apparently declined an invitation to come into the rehearsal room.
Getting the actors on side, suggests Graham, might be a smart move for anyone being portrayed: “The actors are a kind of check and balance on your writing. Because they will go off and do their own research, and generally like to meet the originals. They will be very passionate about getting under the skin of the character. So their passion is a sort of equalising force to make sure that the representation is three-dimensional.” A more formal precaution is the legal disclaimer – about scenes and dialogue being invented for dramatic effect – that routinely appears in the advertising for reality dramas. Limehouse is declared to be “a fictionalised account of real events. It is not endorsed by the individuals portrayed”. The Chichester Festival theatre website advises of Quiz: “This production is a fictional imagination based on real events that took place in 2001 following an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It is not in any way connected with the makers of the programme or any of the individuals portrayed.”
“Although I realise that the broadcaster or theatre has to be legally protected, it sometimes really frustrates me that we have to have those bloody warnings,” says Graham. “I think it can undo a lot of the good of the drama. It means people sometimes assume that you’ve made stuff up when you haven’t.”
“I have some empathy with that view,” agrees Waters. “Because, if you and I were to sit down and go through Limehouse line by line, I could direct you to a source for everything said. But the disclaimers are fair in the sense that these plays are, in publishing terms, usually unauthorised biographies rather than authorised ones. However truthful the plays are, the audience should always know they are watching a fictional construct.”
Rourke says: “We think very carefully about the wording, and work closely with the lawyers to reflect what the objectives are. I remember being with James Graham in the lawyer’s office when he told them he had been invited to New York to look at the Snowden files. And the lawyer literally went white.”
The dead are beyond the reach of libel and privacy laws. So do dramatists inevitably take greater liberties with those who can’t object? “The honest answer,” says Graham, “is yes, a bit, of course. You are certainly liberated from a legal standpoint. But I still think I have a responsibility – and take it very seriously – to ensure that a dead person is fairly represented. Also, just speaking logistically, these people tend to have friends, family or colleagues who bring their own interpretation.”
Waters concurs: “It always comes back to the needs of the play. In a good play, as Michael Frayn said, every character is right. So Roy Jenkins can’t be treated differently just because he’s dead.” Jenkins was strongly represented in Waters’ research by his memoirs, A Life at the Centre, and TV interviews. But a writer may find that the witnesses, living and dead, will disagree about even the date and the weather, never mind what was said.
“Your job is often to negotiate between different accounts,” says Graham, while Waters found that “one thing that has been extraordinary – and liberating – about Limehouse is that no one seems to be able to remember anything. It has even been impossible to establish who came up with the name for the new party.”
Although fact-based plays tend to be historical, their inspiration is often topical. Waters wrote Limehouse because the current left-right schism in the Labour party is very similar to the one that existed before the launch of the SDP. Similarly, Graham wrote This House, the story of a coalition government in the late 70s, at the time that the Cameron-Clegg partnership was in power from 2010-15. And Quiz, based on a TV scandal that happened 16 years ago, has come about now because of the general cultural interest in truth and deceit.
A more cynical explanation of the rush of plays about real subjects is that they are an easier sell to the public than entirely fictional stories. Rourke accepts this possibility: “I think, with whatever production you put on, you have to run the test question: Why would people come to see this? And the fact that something is based on a real event or real person can be a strong hook.”
Intriguingly, in a post-Brexit Britain, the EU-guaranteed right to free expression might disappear from the statutes, which would make bio-drama harder, but UK law might also lose European definitions of privacy, which would make the genre easier.
At the press night of Limehouse on Wednesday, David and Debbie Owen had the possibly unique experience of sitting for 100 minutes looking at a representation of their kitchen on stage. The other surviving members of the SDP, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, were next to the Owens in Row D, disconcertingly visible, in the 251-seat Donmar, to the actors representing their selves from 36 years ago.
Looking always rapt, sometimes apprehensively so, Lord Owen frequently laughed loudly, even when, with his character off stage, “Bill Rodgers” described “David” as regarding himself as “the Devon JFK”.
“It was very strange,” Owen told me afterwards. But I think it’s a brilliant piece of playwriting: all the political arguments are there.” And Tom Goodman-Hill as him? “Very good. It’s a caricature, of course. But I think you have to take the whole thing in the round.”
It will also be quite a night if Murdoch comes to see Ink, although Graham is used to such overlaps between stage and stalls. This House has a scene in which Helene Hayman, a Labour MP, breastfeeds her baby on stage: “At one performance, there I was sitting next to Baroness Hayman and the baby, now a grown woman! It was kind of surreal.”
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Limehouse is at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2H, until 15 April, Committee opens there on 23 June. Ink is at the Almeida, London N1, from 17 June. Quiz is at the Minerva, Chichester, from 3 November.
