One of Rufus Norris’s aims since he became artistic director of the National two years ago has been to make sure that the theatre lives up to its name. He worries that it wears London blinkers. My Country: A Work in Progress is a reflection of that anxiety – and a response to Brexit.
Norris and Carol Ann Duffy have edited interviews with people from Scotland, Wales, Ireland and all corners of England to get a picture of Britain on the verge of leaving Europe – and perhaps of Scottish independence. Their views on patriotism, immigration and Europe are interleaved with words by Duffy, spoken by chairwoman Britannia, played by Penny Layden in plumed helmet. There are no London witnesses, whose mostly Remain arguments are likely to be well known to a Dorfman audience. Will that look like a lack as the play goes on tour?
The intent is laudable. The execution by multi-tasking actors is sleek. But the effect is limp. Verbatim drama can excite the imagination as much as any fiery fiction. But to do so it must bring us voices we haven’t heard before – or make us hear familiar voices in a new way. There are too many antique stereotypes here: the whisky-swigging Scot, the singing Welshman. And too much jaunty theatricality. Layden strenuously imitates Boris Johnson’s plummy goofiness as if his demeanour rather than his views were up for challenge.
Worst of all, it is old hat. There are some voices that it would have been salutary to hear a year ago. Sweet and melancholy glimpses. From a north-eastern farmer, beautifully voiced by Laura Elphinstone, who talks of his Galloways and Blue Greys. From the Edinburgh man who went to the council school just across from Fettes college and remembers those shielded Tony Blairs in their Harris tweed jackets. It is too late now. We are in a different, more obviously dark condition, the closest to civil war than any time in my life. Old friends cannot bear to be in the same room with those who voted differently. That is the country I would like to see on stage now. This looks like a soft dodging of a painful conflict.
• At the Dorfman, National Theatre, London until 22 March, then touring
